Correction appended
In the world of art, like many professions, being a woman
isn’t always easy. Most paintings by female artists fetch
lower prices than those of their male counterparts, and female
artists’ work represents only a small fraction of art being
sold at prestigious auctions, according to a 2005 New York Times
article.
“It’s a boy’s art world,” said Mahyar
Nili, a fourth-year women’s studies and art student.
“It’s a boy’s world, period.”
To combat these inequalities, Nili and 16 other artists will be
displaying their artwork as part of an exhibition put on by the
student group fem-in-art that will take place through this week at
the Kinross Building.
The exhibit presents artists from various departments, including
women’s studies, Chicana/o studies and art.
Through the exhibition, fem-in-art members aim to inspire
discussion about feminism, both in the traditional sense of
women’s rights and in divisions of feminism within that,
including inequalities in class, race, gender and sexuality.
Nili, one of the exhibition’s organizers, first conceived
of fem-in-art in conversations with art department Chair Barbara
Drucker, when she noticed the classes she was taking did not really
address feminist issues and concerns in the works being
studied.
“We had conversations about her work. She was extremely
interested in woman artists and the history of work by woman
artists, and noticed that she didn’t know a lot about it and
there wasn’t a formal class for it,” Drucker said.
With the seed of fem-in-art planted in her mind, Nili began to
get the word out and received a positive response. The next major
challenge was coming up with the group’s name.
When trying to decide the name of their new student group, the
question of whether or not to put the word “feminist”
in the title brought up some debate.
“It was definitely an important issue whether or not to
have the word “˜feminist’ in the title of the group
because it can scare people off or discourage them because it seems
like kind of an outdated word to some people,” said Kale
Likover, a fifth-year art student and an organizer of the event.
“On the other hand, though, we knew that people who are
interested in feminism would be coming.”
“We wanted people who can get beyond the word,” Nili
added. “In the women’s studies department, it’s
not a dirty word. We’re not in a time of post-feminism.
It’s a very important word, so it was important to keep the
word in there.”
Adding to the complexity is the fact that feminism no longer
means what it did 35 years ago.
“Among white middle class American women, feminism
doesn’t mean the same thing it meant in 1970,” said
Alexis Disselkoen, a fourth-year art student and co-organizer of
the fem-in-art exhibition. “It’s kind of this taboo
word, almost, with middle class women because they feel like they
don’t have this struggle. But I think feminism is still very
alive and needs to be talked about for the benefit of many women in
our society today.”
The varying needs of women from different socio-economic
circumstances and countries calls for a loose definition of
feminism. For example, the feminist issues that concern women from
the United States would be irrelevant to women who struggle just to
fulfill their basic needs.
“In America it might mean one thing, whereas in a
third-world country it might mean something simple, like clean
water,” Likover said. “Getting clean water to people,
or health aid or food, is going to help women as well as everyone
else.”
Although the struggle for various underrepresented groups’
rights is ongoing, at least female artists can find some hope.
“It was a fight to get (women’s art) respected in
the art world because the art world was and still is dominated
mainly by the male artists,” Drucker said. “But because
there’s been this 30 years plus (since the movement began),
women have really taken a strong place in the art world and
they’ve gotten the conversation reframed.”