ABSTRACT
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Artists, Berlin Angela Dimitrakaki, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory,
University of Edinburgh, and author of books including Gender, artWORK and the Global Imperative: A Materialist Feminist Critique (Manchester)
Kerryn Greenberg, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, London Koyo Kouoh, Artistic Director, RAW Material Company, Dakar, and curator of
exhibitions including Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists (WIELS)
Camille Morineau, Independent Curator, Co-Founder and President of AWARE, Archive of Women Artists, Research and Exhibition, and former Curator at the Centre Pompidou where she curated exhibitions including elles@centrepompidou
Helena Reckitt, Senior Lecturer in Curating, Department of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, and former Senior Curator of Programmes at the Power Plant, Toronto
Mirjam Westen, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum for Modern Art, Arnhem, the Netherlands, whose exhibitions include rebelle. Art & Feminism, 1979-2009, and Female Power. Matriarchy, Spirituality and Utopia
Introduction
In an online discussion that took place between December 2015 and February 2016, artists, curators, and scholars considered how female artists are incorporated into dominant as well as feminist canons and under what terms. Women artists have
been and continue to be excluded from or marginalized within almost all artistic canons to date. The situation is even more extreme for female artists who work in non-Western locations, who are frequently treated as exotic outsiders if not ignored altogether. Meanwhile, resistance to and backlash against feminist ideas and values is underway throughout the world, at the same time as many archives devoted to women’s and feminist work face closure. There is therefore a pronounced need for scholars, curators, and institutions to contest the absence of women artists from and devaluation within dominant narratives by researching and foregrounding artists who were close to existing canons but marginalized because of their gender, as well as artists who contested mainstream movements and developed their own collective as well as personal paths. This collective effort also calls for the development of institutions that support this art and guard against its future erasure.
