Film & Video (Film & Video)

Our Grandmothers’ Gardens by Olga Grotova is based on the history of Soviet allotment gardens, which were small plots of land distributed amongst the families of factory workers to compensate for poor food supply in a country that was over-producing weapons. Beginning in the 1960s, Grotova’s great grandmother and grandmother tended an allotment garden for three decades, after their release from an all-female gulag camp for “enemies of the people”. These camps detained wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of men executed during Stalinist repressions.

Photography (Photography)

Our Grandmothers’ Gardens by Olga Grotova is based on the history of Soviet allotment gardens, which were small plots of land distributed amongst the families of factory workers to compensate for poor food supply in a country that was over-producing weapons. Beginning in the 1960s, Grotova’s great grandmother and grandmother tended an allotment garden for three decades, after their release from an all-female gulag camp for “enemies of the people”. These camps detained wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of men executed during Stalinist repressions.

Installation (Installation)

Agony of the New Bed by Sheelasha Rajbhandari brings out the familiar yet often ignored reality of gender discrimination and taboos built within the construct of marriage. Part of the artist’s series Marriage Taboos , these portraits of women from different age groups in Nepal are staged on cotton mattresses placed on miniature golden matrimonial beds. The embroidered text on top of the portraits in golden threads are a representation of the range of vulnerable and resilient emotions experienced by women and the social beliefs towards them.

Photography (Photography)

Our Grandmothers’ Gardens by Olga Grotova is based on the history of Soviet allotment gardens, which were small plots of land distributed amongst the families of factory workers to compensate for poor food supply in a country that was over-producing weapons. Beginning in the 1960s, Grotova’s great grandmother and grandmother tended an allotment garden for three decades, after their release from an all-female gulag camp for “enemies of the people”. These camps detained wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of men executed during Stalinist repressions.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Fig. 33. 9 Your Love is a King by Yeni Mao is a sculpture made of blackened steel, brass, glazed ceramic, and leather.

Installation (Installation)

In the mid-1990s, Belli started to create soft sculptures that allowed her to reconnect with manual labor and sewing learned from her seamstress mother. Using recycled fabrics and objects collected from friends and second-hand stores in Nicaragua, Belli’s work explored the codification of family space—using dolls, tables, tablecloths, and curtains—making tangible how masculine authority is inscribed onto women’s bodies daily. Produced during her time as an MFA student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Diálogo is part of a group of sculptures that addresses the tension between restriction and agency, imprisonment and liberation, and ultimately, the possibilities and limits of human action in a society with deeply eroded democratic structures.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Alka domo by Seba Calfuqueo is a performative video work that recontextualizes a story about Caupolicán, the Mapuche toki (meaning symbol of strength and perseverance in the face of adversity). Caupolicán was elected military leader by the Mapuche people of Chile after successfully completing the challenge of holding a log on his shoulders for two days. Caupolicán led the Mapuche army in the first uprising against the Spanish conquistadors from 1553 to 1558.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Greek mythology, Arachne was a talented mortal weaver who challenged Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a weaving contest; this hubris resulted in her being transformed into a spider. EE-0 is the first episode of the Europa Enterprise project which looks into new, feminist readings of established Eurocentric myths and reconsiders the meaning of cultural heritage and the production of artifacts for the future. In EE-0 , the Greek myth of Arachne is re-contextualized through a poetic script, taking an imaginative leap from antiquity into science fiction.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shaun Leonardo uses his own body to communicate and portray imagery. In his film Bull in the Ring , hyper-masculine images of physicality are staged at the expense of his own physical comfort. The function of the male body has long been a signifier of self-worth and the body affirms and legitimizes feelings of control and agency over environment.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The word Coyolxauhqui refers to femicide or the killing of women in rural Mexico on the basis of gender. The mutilation of the Aztec moon goddess Coyolxauhqui by her brother Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and human sacrificer, is reimagined in this film. Coyolxauhqui by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos is the first in a trilogy of films that positions itself as a form of political resistance, delving into the relationship between current Mexican femicide and broader cultural traditions.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China. For this video, Wong accompanied six male friends from art school to a group show of their work titled “Inside Looking Out” at Osage Gallery in Beijing. Throughout her visit, she was rarely acknowledged for her own creative accomplishments and was more frequently introduced as an artist’s girlfriend, and often without name.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

And words were whispered by Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a series of ten works on paper based on the lived experiences of Indian women taken to the Natal region of South Africa from the 1860s to the early 1900s to work in tea and sugarcane plantations during apartheid, which included servitude in its broadest and most sinister definition. This often-overlooked chapter in colonial history is close to the artist, as her maternal family was contracted to a sugar plantation in Natal, then one of the four British colonies in South Africa. These indentured servants, derogatorily called ‘coolies’, were employees by title, but were effectually slaves.