Patriarchal societies

This my last post before the Degree assessment and show.

Throughout this blog, as I have explored The Patriarchal Society, I have followed the views of the media and press on matters that concern the abuse and control of women. I wonder if the discussion of this is part of the Zeitgist of our times?

In the UK there is certainly an awareness now of the historical stiffling of womens ‘ voices and talents. I watched The Story of Women and Art on BBC2. Contrary to what George Baseltz and Brian Sewel think and say, there have been great women artists in the past. They just got “forgotten” by misogynistic history.

Properzia de Rossi was a renaissance sculptor, included by Georgio Vasari in his account of Lives of the Artists. This was a phenomenal achievement at a time when despite the “rebirth”, women were expected to be decorously absent from public life – unless they were muses, goddesses, saints or whores. She honed her skills by first carving tiny fruit stones and aged 35 won an open sculpture competition for the Basilica of San Pietronio in Bologna. Her piece, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife displayed her great talent. At the same time it damned her. Her knowedge of male anatomy was deemed too deep. A rival sculptor spread rumours about her that she was a “bitch” and he made sure she neither got paid well for the commission nor secured any more. Not exactly an even playing field. However, this piece exists today in San Pietronio – but not in a prominent position worthy of a competitively won commission – and is exquisite.

I read on the blog of Charlotte Gittins, one of the researchers for the programme that:

Whittling down the artists we could feature in the series, when there were so many deserving of our attention, was gut-wrenching.

The discussion of the work of these numerous, talented women artists is both exciting and depressing. They were celebrated in their times despite the enormous restrictions and hurdles they needed to overcome, and yet they have been edited out of the canon.

Now, however, there is an awareness that women are talented and make great artists and always have.

There is an awareness too that the current abuse of women in Pakistan, Nigeria and the Sudan, which I have discussed previously in my blog, is abhorrent and totally unacceptable to civilised societies.

The Times yesterday had SAVE MERIAM (the Sudanese woman condemned to death for apostasy) on its front page, describing how the world is appalled at her medieval treatment. Justin Welby was actually in Lahore only a few streets away from Farzana Iqbal when she was stoned to death and has also spoken out about this shocking act. In The Times today the Prime Minister is quoted as calling on the Sudanese goverment to lift the “barbaric” death sentence. In a Leading article the editor calls for pressure to be exerted on the Middle East, Asia and Africa where Christians are being cruelly persecuted with the rise of Islam.

Weren’t we here in Medieval times?

A letter to the Times today discussing the cases of the Nigerian school girls, Meriam Ibrahim and Farzan Psrveen says it is not just the religious intolerance that is appalling; it is the attitude to violence against woman in all its forms. The international community needs to unite; to fight to allow all women to have the basic human rights accorded to men.

I second that.

On the subject of FGM, there has been some progress. Finally, the Islamic Sharia Council, the Muslim College and the Muslim Council of Britain have come together to condem FGM.

They say FGM is not an Islamic requirement. They say:

FGM is bringing the religion of Islam into disrepute

I second that.

They intend to distribute thousands of leaflets to schools, mosques and community centres to end this oppressive and inhumane custom.

This is now their jihad.

I hope they can convince the men; fathers, brothers, husbands.

I hope they persuade the young men to speak out against this terrible practice.

I hope their voice becomes the voice of Islam throughout the world.

Do Not Cut The Flowers

• 
• 
• 
• 

These will be my last few posts as my piece is almost ready for assessment. I feel pleased that it has worked out how I envisaged it, with a few minor alterations.

Rather than 90 prints there are now 96. I had originally thought of a section with 10 rows of 9 prints and the final piece is 6 prints wide by 16 deep. Although I was always aiming for 90 prints, I did quite a few spare – so I had choices. In the end I had 98 prints and used all but 2 of them.

I have my white walls on either side and the vinyl lettering looks good – and I managed to get it level without making a mess of it.

I am getting all my note books ready and have printed out my degree proposal again as it is required. I perused it to see how much I have followed out my proposal.

In it I talk about women as objects, possessions. My previous work had reflected some of that: history and also brutality in Iran.

I mentioned Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin as my influences. Both are print makers and talk about the women in society. I think my greatest influence has been Louise Bourgeois however: her wit and understatement, her unfailing energy i find most admirable. She worked in series – the last one A L’Infini moved me enormously when I saw it in Edinburgh early this year.

Following my proposal I did explore the Patriarchal Society and how women have lost power as the sacred life givers through, I believe, the influences of Primogeniture and various misogynist religions.

We cannot escape the news and men are still in charge in our society while in places like India and Pakistan women are abominably treated. Everyday there is some terrible event to report concerning the abuse of women.

Murdering and raping women is illegal in most countries, yet it seems to be getting worse. It’s as if men feel they have an entitlement to do so.

Female Genital Mutilation is illegal in this country, and has been for 29 years, but the numbers of British born girls being mutilated because of such barbaric, medieval customs, is rising. it is now mentioned frequently in the newspapers.

I had considered doing one final piece on Female Genital Mutilation and perhaps moving onto a sculpture using the wooden struts we removed from our roof space to represent the structure of the Patriarchal Society.

I arrived at a symbolic idea to convey the horror of mutilation; a bloody orchid. When I showed these first prints to my tutors they liked the idea and the concept of a large piece, comprising many prints, grew. It also seemed true to me, and something that I just couldn’t let go.

Rather than doing just one shape in the middle of the paper, I tried various different shapes and sizes – representing the different ages when females are mutilated from babies and children to young women. Within the bleeding orchid prints there are also prints to represent the bloodied pieces of amputated flesh, and also, in extreme cases, infibulation. This is an attempt to show the reality of the horrendous practice. Normally it is unseen and only obvious from the traumatised withdrawal of the young girl and her painful walk.

If we can’t see something in society, we don’t want to think about it.

Louise Bourgeois was always subtle. I hope my approach is too, yet shocking at the same time. I have tried to give the work an aesthetic quality and if people want to make the connections then hopefully there will also be a frisson of horror as they realise what they are looking at and walking over.

Bourgeois didn’t exhibit her prints on the floor. I have researched a contemporary New York artist who does: Polly Apfelbaum. Her work is colourful and textural, influenced by Outsider Art, Feminism and daily life. She rejects aggressive masculinity.

It is interesting how we view work: sculpture sits in its own space – but the rest is usually hung on walls.

The floor is exciting. But you need to have ample space and space is often at a premium.

• 
• 

Wow what a day! As William and I arrived at 8.30 am at Uni we saw the enormous delivery truck from Ipswich Plastics waiting by the woodwork studio…

We took the four acrylic sheets upstairs and spent a long time drawing out the lines where they were to go ( I left the mathematics to William). Then I laid the prints on the floor. I used 96. Although I had originally thought “90” , I had done extras, and somehow the space requested more… We taped them all down so that they didn’t move and were secure. Jane our tutor even suggested that they looked nice like that and did I need the acrylic? ( what a waste of £260 was my first and only thought!). The assessment is one thing but for the Degree show, I knew that unprotected, they would get dog-eared and destroyed. So perhaps I did need them…

When we first put the sheets down ( a nightmare of static as we removed the protective membrane…) they divided the prints up unevenly, cutting some in half.

Oh dear.

However, thank God for Architects!

William worked out very quickly that if we moved and rotated them, the sheets would line up on the joins of the prints.

What an amazing difference!

No nasty intersections, less obvious buckling of the sheets.

Things were looking up!

We taped the edges down with a wide cellotape, taking a scalpel to the overlaps so that they looked neat.

This is a requirement of Health and Safety. (However, if people are drunk on all that free alcohol, goodness knows what they can do…)

The space looked good: empty, white, red on the ground, black lettering.

I knew it wouldn’t be like that for long as I have to share the space, but I took my photos.

The lettering looks good; Do Not Cut The Flowers large on one side, and on the other, slightly lower; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (Yeats)

It had come together. The acrylic actually helped . It “made” it. I felt very much that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. People who had no idea what it is or what it is about said:

“Wow!”, and then, ” it looks bloody; like surgery “

Well, it is: barbaric, primitive “surgery” for no legitimate reason. I hope people get the full message…

• 
• 
• 
• 

I am reminded of another poem by W.B.Yeats

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

I certainly feel that things have fallen apart in our Fine Art Department. There is no enthusiasm for this Degree Show. People have disappeared from the course and gone home to paint or do their work, not even appearing on time to prepare their allocated spaces. Some we can’t even contact to find out if they are doing the show. Things seem pointless, there is no sense of cohesion, no sense of fun or excitement, only an underlying anger.

The photography department at UCS have been flooded out with torrential rain and in Glascow the Iconic Mackintosh Art School burnt down last week on the eve of submitting work for their Degree Show.

Elections have shown UKIP and far right parties getting in. There is an anger with the EU and the lack of autonomy in its member countries. The dangerous thing is that UKIP and the far right parties are extreme and fascist – and deeply misogynistic, naturally.

So, there is a general feeling of change, but uneasy change. Where is it all going? And for us, after our show is finished in a couple of weeks, we too go. Fractured, splintered, but perhaps with a greater sense of what a whole should and could be…in a better world.

In the papers, apart from fire, flooding and political change and unease, there has been yet another account of dispicable treatment towards a woman in Pakistan. A young woman of 25, Farzana Iqbal, married a man she loved, but her family wanted her to have an arranged marriage. She was about to meet her husband and go to court in Lahore to register that she hadn’t been kidnapped but had willingly married her man, when her father, brothers and a mob stoned her to death outside the courts. She was three months pregnant. The father has been arrested and says it was an honour killing. He will probably get off. 1000 women a year get killed in the name of honour in Pakistan. That is almost three a day.

We should all be ashamed.

The UK gives Pakistan over £400 million in aid a year.

After this degree, I am going to set up petitions to question aid being sent to countries reverting to medieval ways. What is this aid being used for? These countries are becoming even more barbaric and flaunting it. I don’t want my taxes going to countries where women are treated like mere objects owned by men and murdered infront of courts in broad daylight. And no one gets prosecuted. Petitions work. I have signed enough on Facebook to see that they really do hold power and force Politicians to consider what is being voiced.

Aid should be given in the form of Education – and especially Education for women to empower them and raise their status.

In the UK we need to urge women to both think about and change references to them being owned by their fathers and husbands. We need to really challenge a system where white, middle-aged, middle class men are still in charge.

Apathy is no excuse. Equality in not a natural human characteristic. Fight.

• 
• 
• 

My degree project is coming together:

1. I have decided on how I will use the space.

2. I have sorted out the covering – acrylic and ordered and paid for it, arranging delivery for Friday 30 May.

Today I saw Mark Lapper in the studios and explained what is happening. All OK – it has passed Health and Safety (phew)

3. I am organising the lettering- I have seen Do Not Cut The FLowers which will measure 120cm in width and are in Helvetica – like the font in the book I am showing with my work. The quotation will be in italics and measure 120 cm too.

4. I have painted all my walls and most of my co-exhibitors space too.

5. The post cards which will be with the book on a plinth have arrived – looking suitably bloody… The book arrives soon too.

6. I have even washed and cleaned down a table that I want to leave my work on so that the examiners can peruse my other prints , and hopefully see how I arrived at my degree show piece…

Now I am just left with a few regrets about works I didn’t finish…

My wooden struts, which looked to me like Patriarchs, haven’t moved on from their clustered state. But perhaps that is a metaphor for how I see the Patriarchal State – in terms of:

cronyism, hostility, inertia

Perhaps these wooden struts are my Patriarchs.

So what shall I do with them?

Burn them?

Perhaps I should do an installation bonfire. Not at uni – (imagine what Health and Safety would do…) but at home – in my garden:

A ritual burning, a promise, an incantation for Challenge and Change.

• 
• 
• 
•