Sunday 3 February 2019

REVIEW: WOMEN POWER PROTEST



I can still hardly believe that it's my fourth (and last) year living in Birmingham. During that time, I've really tried to make the most of city life and all it has to offer. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which can be found just off of the Council House in Victoria Square is free entry and one of my weekend highlights. 

I really visited the Women Power Protest exhibition, located in the Gas Hall in the museum's basement. Showcasing vibrant contemporary artworks, the exhibition is a celebration of female artists who explore gendered issues of protest and identity in their work, a century since the first women won the right to vote. 

The inter-sectional feminist exhibition features the work of artists such as Susan Hiller, Lubaina Himid and Mary Kelly, who tackle difficult gendered issues head on. A post-apocalyptic painting of a woman being gang-raped on a pool table in the rape culture zone was particularly hard-hitting to see. However, it is really important to note that viewers are offered an exhibition map to navigate their way around the exhibition, if they wish to avoid these running into these graphic themes. 

The exhibition powerfully documents the power of the male gaze in art, the commodification of female bodies and the double standards that women continue to face, day in and day out. In doing so, it captures the subtly of gender inequality in the 21st century, as it takes possession of our everyday lives and thus, the absolute necessity of feminism today. Gender inequality takes the form of the gender pay gap, the expectation of women to balance work and home life and the endless stream of female victims stepping forward to report sexual assault and misconduct in the #MeToo movement. But it also exists in ways which are perhaps so insidious and gradual that we are unable to spot them? Or perhaps, we would much rather carry on with our everyday lives than to admit their pervasiveness? 

The Women Power Protest exhibition is a powerful documentation of gender inequality in 21st century and a persuasive justification for a far more inter-sectional form of feminism in the 21st century. For more information on the exhibition, click on this link.

Antonia x 



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