ATHENS.- He Museo of Contemporary Art of Athens (EMST) dedicates a cycle of exhibitions to women artists, in a pioneering initiative titled What if women ran the world?
“For 10 months, the entire museum will be in the hands of women artists,” celebrated Katerina Gregos, artistic director of the museum, one of the main ones in the Greek capital.
The permanent exhibition of this museum installed in a former brewery has been remodeled in order to bring to light 25 female artists of all generations and origins: painters, sculptors and photographers such as Diana Al-Hadid (Syria), Eleni Kamma ( Greek), Annette Messager (French) and Cornelia Parker (English).
Another 15 temporary exhibitions will follow.
Until now only 37% of the artists represented in the permanent exhibition were women.
“It is the first time, it seems to me, that a large public museum dedicates its entire programming for 10 months to women artists,” Gregos explained. “Women artists remain underrepresented in most aspects of the art world,” she added.
“We wanted to reverse the trend and see what a museum would be like if, instead of a few symbolic pieces, works by female artists made up the majority,” added Gregos, looking at one of her favorite works in the exhibition, two paintings by the Iranian Tala Madani, exiled in New York and who questions masculinity and dysfunctional families.
A different world
In the collections of the 18 major museums in the United States, 87% of the works were made by men. In Greece there are no statistics.
During the visit, works are discovered that question stereotypes of female beauty, issues of violence against women and the poverty that affects them hardest.
Artists featured in the museum
Three Greek artists are exhibited in the first part. Among them, Leda Papaconstantinou, 78, one of the most important contemporary artists, who had never had an exhibition dedicated to her work in a museum in Greece.
Along with her works are those of Chryssa Romanos (1931-2006), known for her political collages – in which she denounces consumerism and inequalities – and those of Danai Anesiadou, a contemporary artist from the Greek diaspora, who grew up in Belgium and He is mainly dedicated to collage and sculpture.
“In a country like Greece, where there has never been an organized feminist movement in the visual arts and where women artists have been systematically marginalized for decades, this initiative is an important message and the repair of a great inequality,” Gregos highlighted.
At the beginning of the permanent exhibition, a frieze describes the advances in the cause of women in Greece and reminds that they did not have the right to vote until the early 1950s. It also reminds that in marriages, the dowry was not abolished until 1983 .
The title of the museum’s exhibition cycle, What if women ran the world? is inspired by a play by Israeli Yael Bartana (2017).
“Most wars and destructions are mostly orchestrated by men,” Gregos commented.
“Maybe there would be less violence, more commitment and more equality if women led. It wouldn’t be a perfect world, but it would certainly be different,” she reflected.
The exhibitions were considerably enriched on the occasion of this cycle thanks to a very important donation from businessman Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who made his fortune in the agri-food industries and finance.
The contemporary art museum was due to open in 2012, but was not fully inaugurated until 2021.
Source: AFP
