Patriarchal societies

I have finished printing my 90 flowers!

Some of these I printed onto wet Somerset paper and some onto dry. Where the paper was dry I also splattered water so it made the silkscreen inks bleed and this effect was transfered to the paper below when I squeegied the inks through.

I have a considerable variety now of flowers. Some are bleeding , some are mutilated, some have been sewn up too.

After I had finished, and armed with all my dry prints, I went up to the Studios and laid them down in the biggest space I could find. I asked people for feed back. I mentioned that I was thinking of sewing the prints together and hanging them on a wall, but people thought they looked good on the floor! This was an interesting idea.

If I put them on the floor, I would like to protect them so people can walk on them if they like.

This adds another dimension: The Down Trodden, the Repressed. Being walked over is another form of violation, both literally and metaphorically.

I cannot put glass over the prints – for obvious safety reasons – but I could put perspex! As there will be joins in the prints, it doesn’t matter if there are joins in the perspex/it is not all one piece.

I need to find out if the White Space is free – or if I can put them on the floor in the Studio.

What also came to mind was the last line from W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) poem, “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

In a way this is relevant because with the mutiliation of a woman’s sexuality, a whole dimension of human experience is lost to her.

People walking over the perspex and prints are walking over a symbol of the murdered sexuality of young women. Often their very lives, their health and their power.

The poem by W.B.Yeats is very beautiful:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

It is a love poem. Is it irrelevant?

Not really, as love and sexual passion go together and women are mutilated so they never experience passion, therefore their experience of love is also diminished.

Their dreams are dashed, they are walked over – they are disempowered.

In the space I do get, I could perhaps have the title on one wall:

Do Not Cut The Flowers

If people are walking over them, then on an opposite wall I would put:

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. W.B.Yeats (1865-1939)

I have also writen to our Ipswich MP, Ben Gummer asking him what he is going to do so that FGM is not practiced in Ipswich. From past experience I know that MPs always reply on Common’s paper. I could frame his reply.

I could also do a print of the statistics of FGM in the various countries. Either as a silkscreen or as a reverse print transfer.

And a separate one for the UK , France and other European countries – or perhaps just keep it to European countries?

If it is against the law and happens here, it somehow makes it WORSE.

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Some things don’t go away. If someone is hurt and humiliated and their feelings not sufficiently acknowleged, they either turn away in anger – leave the course – or fight so something similar doesn’t happen again to another student.

This is what happened with the artist’s comment I discussed in my 9th posting.

Our fellow black student felt shocked by her outrageous comment, but our laughter was humiliating for him. Humiliation is a horrible feeling. I feel ashamed now that I laughed. Jokes are often cruel, this joke was and has certainly had far reaching consequences.

Sometimes when people are hurt, they need their feelings to be acknowledged. Remember all those people who have had some medical malpractice and end up fighting the NHS through the courts? Often they say that at the time an acknowledgement or apology would have stopped their battle – but the Institution closed ranks. Our colleague felt that all his attempts for recognition were blocked and few people understood his shock and hurt.

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Rather than leaving the course he is fighting so other students never have to experience this. The problem is threefold: the comment, the laughter and the lack of redress. He is being very brave: sticking his head above the parapet, challenging the comment, us and the University.

And I now see he is right.

I am part of that institution of old fashioned education – although I have tried to rebel against it most of my life. I imagine a lot of us argued against the comment being racist as our laughter therefore made us implicit. No one wants to be thought of as racist.

However we need to examin the remarks and ask these questions:

Would the comments have been made to an audience that was more ethnicly diverse?

I think not.

Would these remarks have been made if Michele and Barack Obama were in the audience?

I think not.

So there was definitely an element of casual racism.

A lot of us, myself included, didn’t really listen to him after the event. He did complain, he did try and get acknowlegement, but to no avail.

He believes that his feelings were sacrificed because this artist donates a picture once a year to the Fine Art Auction, and is famous.

He certainly has a point. I too was worried that, should she hear about this, she wouldn’t help out again, and might even ask for this year’s donated picture back.

And so what?

What about our fellow student’s feelings? Why is her painting more important then a student who has been on the course for three years and whom we do know well? And know to be a kind, generous, talented person for whom communication and harmony are important?

I am aware too that if people are benefactors they often go unchallenged, especially if they are lauded and recognised by society. These were the circumstances that protected Saville for so long. (I am not saying that there are any more parallels other than the lack of challenge)

Perhaps this artist should have been contacted and informed of the situation. She would have had some opportunity for redress.

With nothing done by the university to acknowlege his experience, the student posted a film using the recording of the remark and the laughter onto his Facebook page.

Copyright can be a problem. He was asked to take down the film. There is another one now, however I don’t think he would be sued. And he doesn’t care if he were, because this would only give a greater platform to his argument – and he has no assets to lose.

At the time I argued with him that her comment wasn’t racist – but tasteless and gross. I was missing the complexities of the situation.

I listened but I didn’t hear.

I agree with him that commodity should not be put over student welfare.

I agree with him that our degree show should not use the £650 her painting raisedand that sum should be given to charity.

Casual racism is insidious.

I think this is one of my most significant learning experiences at university.

As I look over my blog to date, I realise I haven’t talked much about my methods of printing.

A technique I like to use is the open screen method where I paint onto the screen and then use a squigee to press the inks through. I often use an aquasheen varnish to facilitate this – and the varnish also gives a slight sheen to the surface – but less so on the Somerset paper that I have soaked in water. Often the image left behind on the screen is one I would like to be able to save too …

When I work with layers of paper, I print and draw onto tissue paper which I then spray with photo mount glue and put the pieces through the roller press to stick them flat together. The layer of tissue slightly dulls down the colours of the inks below – an effect I like and have worked with. Often the crinkles in the tissue show – as it is quite difficult to smooth a large piece flat! Again, I like this effect, it can be like wrinkled fabric.

In Goddess and Church, the female figure has been printed onto tissue paper and stuck over another piece that had been penciled and inked. She emerges from the background and her sheet of tissue has dulled down the pink and red dripping from the cross. The green of her inking has slightly crocodiled – an effect, I have noticed, which happens on tissue when silkscreened.

When I have finished my 90 flower piece, I intend to examine identity and control using some wooden dolls I purchased – like Russian dolls but unpainted. I plan to project images and film/photograph them. At the moment I have the red background and some red splattered cellophane paper over them. This is a project in the making…

I also intend to examine Patriarchy once more with the wooden trusses that inspired me a few months ago. I had been working with them in the Wood Making studio, arduously sawing them down and then using a table to prop them up in the sculpture room. Someone thought it was very interesting how I tried to arrange them – while I had been considering the structure of Patriarchy. She thought it would be interesting to video my decisions. I also think it would be interesting to video both male and females arranging the trusses.

I intend to call this piece The Blind Leading the Blinded, ie male societies dominating the disempowered. The quotation from the Bible is: If the blind shall lead the blind then they both shall fall in the ditch.

The world is certainly in a bit of a ditch as climate change is finally acknowleged and it will be the poorer countries who suffer.

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Reflecting on my blog, I realise that I portray myself as very angry about Patriarchal societies and their treatment of women.

This is fair enough, I think, as women can often get a short straw in life and western societies are still patriarchal.

Am I doing the right thing with my anger however?

Am I keeping my audience?

I admire Louise Bourgeois and how she dealt with her anger in a subtle and subversive way. Her seminal piece, Destruction of the Father, goes a long way to express anger at Patriarchal families and societies – and she certainly knew about them from her own experience in France. She lived most of her life in America and I wonder what she thought of FGM – which is now practiced increasingly often, despite being illegal, among immigrant populations there? I wonder how she would have addressed herself? Was she proud of France for its determination to stamp it out?

The more I read about it, ( regularly in the newspapers these days), the more important it seems to me to make FGM the subject of my degree show. I am working on my 90 bleeding flowers – I have 60 so far. The piece will be big to reflect the enormity of the problem and the importance of erradicating the practice.

Do Not Cut the Flowers is a negative imperative . I do not want there to be any doubt about my abhorrence of the practice. Yet I hope it is subtle enough to be Fine Art and not a didactic rant.

Some people may not know what I am referring to. But then they may not know what FGM is anyway, nor read newspapers. Others I hope will make the connection and shudder. I hope if they carry any authority in any fields where FGM may occur, teachers for example, they remain aware and informed.

Along with my 90 bleeding flowers piece, I have done a very quick video and posted it onto Youtube. In this, I perform a similar FGM operation on a purse – which looks like a young girl’s labia.

I don’t mention FGM, the dialogue is supposed to be an ironic parrallel, but I have tagged it under FGM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXXFoLbs-0

In another video, I take a scalpel to one of my representative flower prints.This suggests how in Egypt parents think they are being civilised and responsible by going to hospital to have the barbaric practice performed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRUvPFjX-4U

FGM has been illegal in Egypt since 2008, but doctors perform it in private . A young girl died recently in hospital and both her father and the doctor are being prosecuted. This will be the first prosecution. The father was quoted as saying he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known his daughter would die.

Does he think this statement makes him sound like a liberal, caring father?

Today, while printing some of the flowers, I did an experiment, printing onto tissue paper. This has a skin, flesh like effect. I placed the dripping, fragile flower onto a larger piece of Somerset paper to give it some substance . It proceeded to bleed into it. I thought this apt.

A second attempt saw the tissue paper tearing, so I placed it carefully to dry with some paper towel.

Again, I thought the finished piece was pertinent – with the paper towel soaking up the leaking ink.The original piece of tissue is not longer whole; it is ripped and torn.

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Recently on a corridor at uni I remember seeing a notice saying: “History, what else is there?” I was tempted to, (I wish I had), write underneath: “Her Story, of course”.

I do think that in the past women have been written out of history. Patriarchal societies are about men aren’t they?. Take my own schooling ( some time ago) on Art History as an example. I had never heard of Mary Cassat or Berthe Morisot. Both of whom I now think are wonderful artists, capturing sensitivity and lightness in their work. In the National Portrait Gallery there is a painting by Morisot, Girl on a Divan, which I think is most exquisite and timeless. The young girl’s face has a distant, reflective, yet feline quality, her dress luminously conveys its taffita substance and the colours sing. It hangs in a room with some rather lumpy, leaden paintings by Renoir. Brian Sewell, the art critic, often quotes Renoir as saying of himself that he painted with his penis. Certainly his, A Nymph by a Stream, has no visual appeal to me. Her green flesh is most unhealthy and lardy looking and why is she naked outdoors? She doesn’t really look the type to be a wood nymph, she’s just a girl stripped of her clothes; to titillate Renoir no doubt. As he aged, his nudes became more rosy with rolls of flesh, yet no more appealing, in my opinion; objects rather than people.

Brian Sewell is unfortunately not very complimentary about women artists.

In an article in the Independent in 2008:

<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/theres-never-been-a-great-woman-artist-860865.html>

he says:

“The art market is not sexist, the likes of Bridget Riley and Louise Bourgeois are of the second and third rank. There has never been a first-rank woman artist.

Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it’s something to do with bearing children.”

The last sentence, apart from Sewell’s damning misogyny, says it all. Children and marriage DO hold women back, they are time consuming and patriarchal societies do not accommodate women and childrens’ needs well.

If women are lucky and live a long time, moving beyond such obstacles, they have time to produce great work. Once her sons had grown up and her husband died in 1973, nothing held Louise Bourgeois back! She moved to a much bigger studio and produced wonderful work until she died at 98 in 2010. She had a long time to herself.

Tracey Emin realised very early on that she couldn’t be an artist and a mother. She saw at first hand how hard her own mother worked just to provide for Tracey and her brother. Her Art is her Life and her focus involved aborting her foetuses on two occassions. If your energy goes into cooking meals, washing clothes, making pack lunches and working to provide money, what time is left for Art? Most male artists have been fortunate to have wives to do all this.

A few weeks ago I was at Kettle’s Yard seeing The Ben and Winifred Nicholson exhibition. What struck me was how Winifred was head and shoulders above her husband in terms of style, essence and joyousness. He, Ben, even attributed much of what he produced and achieved to her. So why has it taken so long for her to be recognised and lauded?

At the Whitechapel in March I saw the Hannah Hoch exhibition. She didn’t have children, just as well, as the Dadaists merely tolerated her amongst them, despite their whole movement being about emancipation! She is now recognised as the pioneering figure in Photomontage and an eminent Dadaist. Yet apparently when she was with Raoul Hausmann, another Dadaist, he wanted her to give up art to do a proper job and support him! Her work, The Small P, encapsulates for me the exhaustion of young children and relationships: the bawling child is disproportionate to its size and the male portion of the face suggests male neediness too. At the time of this work she was in a lesbian relationship. Says it all really.

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