Thursday, February 25th, 2010...10:28 pm
Feminists in Current Visual Resistance
Kristine Virsis - Alice
Last week I went to an event at Bluestockings, a radical bookstore in lower Manhattan, for the book Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today, based on a traveling exhibition of amazing protest art. A group of artists included in the book gathered to share their thoughts on making art to promote social justice and global equity. Despite being a broad survey of issues and voices (the book is incredible), the topics of sexism, reproductive rights, sexual assault, patriarchy, and other similar issues were not very prominent among these images.
While certainly contemporary printmaking addressing these issues does exist, even a recent exhibition of feminist work from The Center for the Study of Political Graphics lacks a significant recent feminist voice, as most of the work is from prior to 1990. Their collection, Reclaiming the F-word, contains posters addressing so many feminist issues that are still pertinent today, yet most of them weren’t created in the past two decades.
While certain issues may not be as prominent in activist printmaking as they previously were, there are a host of female-identified artists who are using their work, in anywhere from traditional printmaking to flyers and other illustrations, to continue confronting feminist issues in an accessible way.
Just Seeds Collective members such as Kristine Virsis, Favianna Rodriguez, Meredith Stern and Melanie Cervantes, use their prints to address the role of women within resistance movements. Others like For the Birds friends and collaborators Cristy Road and Caroline Paquita are using their art and illustration to tackle gender, sex, and queerness, among other topics. These are just a few of the women I know of who are currently creating accessible feminist art. It would also seem that with a current strengthening of DIY feminist zine culture, there would be a surge in similar image making as well. I’m looking forward to exploring these topics and posting more often about current feminist visual resistance.
In other For the Birds friend-art news, Tamara Waite-SaintIbanez, who designed last year’s Big She Bang poster, has a solo printed sculpture show coming up in March! Check out the flyer for details.
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