Feminist Avatars Reloaded

July 31, 2019
Author Jana Kukaine
Published in Review from Latvia

The group show Euro Femmes was on until the middle of July at the Creative Studio of the Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Museum of Art, showing works by six young feminist artists. The general tone of the exhibition is humorous, playful and witty, refuting the stereotype that feminist art is either angry, lamenting and accusing, or it has to be about menstruation. Notwithstanding the pro-entertainment appearances, the political stance of the show is bold, in this case putting the focus on the body, sexuality, and the politics of representation, employing both local (Latvian) and international perspectives. The artists connect their personal (and sometimes intimate) experiences to broader social problems, like sexism, misogyny, homophobia, the widespread abuse of female bodies, and the inhibition of their subjectivity.

Despite the lively and captivating content of the show, its curatorial ‘packaging’ is rather vague and unworkable (the exhibition’s curator, Mētra Saberova, is also one of the artists). The general urgency of feminism in Latvia is asserted in blurry lines, enclosing an acknowledgement of the necessity to develop an inclusive society. The claim that ‘female voices need to be heard’ is unexpectedly introduced too, and then the optimistic observation that ‘patriarchy does not stop feminism from blooming in our own back garden’ is added, leaving a rather puzzling and wishy-washy impression. The ‘little bit of everything’ approach is not very successful, and fails to provide an enriching conceptual background for the works, leaving them to rely on their own communicative strengths. Similarly, the short comments provided for each work (on a take-away leaflet) occasionally sound too obvious and explanatory. Could the strain of finding a relevant intonation perhaps be indicative of the underdeveloped state of the feminist discourse in Latvia, resulting in the need to strive not only for aesthetic, but also educational goals? This assumption seems highly plausible.

Camila Gonzalez Corea IRL, video, 2018

The exhibition consists of five video works, each made in a distinct manner, and a series of prints. Camila Gonzalez Corea’s video IRL presented at the show is a continuation of her renowned project The Nipple Act, where she used a digital algorithm to transform images of naked female breasts into a pattern of emoji, thus rendering them illegible for online censorship systems that exclude images of nipples. The collection of emojified breasts can be found on an Instagram account that gets deleted from time to time; nonetheless, everyone is welcome to participate with their own submission. The importance of this work is not only in its critique of online censorship and the use of guerilla tactics for the visual survival of the breasts, but also in highlighting the very ambiguity and arbitrariness of representations of the female body: despite its overt sexualisation, the display of the nipples suddenly falls into the category of the obscene. The discrepancy between standards of representation not only generates theoretical questions about the cultural and deeply gendered meaning of being naked (the famous distinction about the naked and the nude being just one example[1]), but also results in practical inconveniences for bra-less outfits and breastfeeding mothers.

The everyday violence used to enforce a normative feminine appearance is emphasised in Mētra Saberova’s animation I Hope You’re Not in This. Despite the conventional assumption that a person’s gender is deeply rooted in her soul, these roots apparently don’t hold too strong if the mere removal of hair calls a person’s identity into question. By adding Count Dracula and The Matrix’s protagonist Morpheus to feminist imagery, the artist succeeds in playing out the irony and the pains of self-disclosure. Meanwhile, the two newcomers are cordially greeted by a diligent housewife and a hot whore, yet another two feminist avatars with a much longer lifespan presented in Kirstin Barnes’ video CumCookWithMe#2.2. There, a cheerful lady shares her exclusive recipe for ‘fake masculinity’, resulting in a sticky fluid reminiscent of male ejaculate, in order to pour it over one’s body and face at the moment of sexual climax. The work arouses a feeling of disgust (a feminist version of the sublime?), which is accompanied with laughter, allowing to appreciate Barnes’ passionate exaggerations. Deconstructing the inherent phallocentric logic of pornography, the work addresses the question of female pleasure, which in a heteronormative intercourse has been conventionally ignored.

Vivianna Maria Staņislavska Porno / Intimacy, silkscreen, 2019. Photo: Krista Saberova

A literal rewriting of cultural scripts of love making is done also by Vivianna Maria Stanislavska in her series of nine silkscreens Porno/Intimacy, where popular scenes from pornography are contrasted with inherently more realistic, down-to-earth and credible scenarios, inviting the audience to come forward with their own contribution as well. True, to be able to see beyond the glaring (and often violent) constructions of the porn industry and access the ‘reality’, you need to put on the rose-tinted spectacles of love. With its romantic and slightly naive drift, the work refers to the consistent line of critique of pornography elaborated by feminist politics in the 1970s. Not only is the misuse of female bodies and male-oriented representation of sex a problem, but so is, as Vivianna Maria Stanislavska demonstrates, the general logic of mainstream pornography with its tendency to objectify bodies injurious for all parties.

Elīna Brasliņa’s puppet animation Who’s Afraid of Gender? is perhaps the most straightforward enactment of inclusive equal-rights politics. Illustrating the ill-informed rage of Latvian society and the absurd rhetoric of its politicians, relentlessly protesting the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, the artist uses imagery already familiar from her previous works to draw attention to the possible implications of the public agenda on the most private family settings. The dramatic effect entailed by family conflict is submerged in the comic outline of the story, whose happy ending is predetermined unfortunately not by its topic, but the genre of silent film it alludes to. In the video, the artist has included a set of arresting details and precise references to ongoing debates, capturing in a nutshell the contradictions, pains and phobias of today’s Latvia.

Personal vulnerability, self-estrangement and the ambiguity of rules regulating one’s self-presentation are highlighted by the works of Daria Blum. In her opening performance, the artist oscillated between the melancholic air of a sad girl and the steady self-awareness of a femme fatale. Building on a typical ‘feminine’ space, she surrounded herself with pieces of elegant clothing, flowers dropping petals, useless high heels, and a mirror, her room being a seemingly careless but undoubtedly pleasing mess of a self-absorbed lady. Perhaps the most captivating part of the performance was its musical arrangements, whose hypnotising patterns could fill the void created by the dreamy, seemingly inhibited and rather purposeless choreography. Blum’s video It’s On Me 2 (too), which was part of the performance and is also on display in the exhibition room, is a common stream of staged selfies (reminiscent of a social media timeline) mixed up with material from a family archive. The self-presentation of the artist emerges from her childhood memories and everyday life, constituted by moments of eating, drinking, hanging out with friends, travelling, having fun and sometimes crying, a list of activities that is well known to everyone who is privileged enough to feel carefree and safe. A more explicit critical claim is made by the second video featuring the seductive song SHINYSHINY. It mimics the aesthetics of a shampoo advertisement, and appeals to the popular location of female bodies within reach of everyone’s touch.

Despite the attempt to draw a line between Western feminism and the ‘laggard’ feminism in Eastern Europe, as Mētra Saberova’s work may imply and which I would definitely object to, on the whole, the exhibition affirms its euro-centric group identity, as suggested by the title. Now, with the acquisition of an international perspective, and the introduction of a single currency (which hopefully will help us to survive Brexit, if not in monetary then at least in conceptual terms), the next challenge could possibly be to work on local histories and cultural singularities in order to disclose their so far unexplored potential for feminist interrogations.

[1]            The distinction between the naked and the nude was introduced by the art theoretician Kenneth Clark in the 1950s, and his position was later widely criticised by John Berger and Lynda Nead.

Daria Blum It’s On Me, 2019. Photo: Krista Saberova

Daria Blum It’s On Me, performance, 2019. Photo: Krista Saberova

Daria Blum It’s On Me, performance, 2019. Photo: Krista Saberova

Elīna Brasliņa Who’s Afraid of Gender?, animation, 2019. Photo: Krista Saberova

Mētra Saberova I Hope You’re Not In This, animation, 2019

Kirstin Barnes CumCookWithMe #2.2, video, 2017. Photo: Krista Saberova

Kirstin Barnes CumCookWithMe #2.2, video, 2017. Photo: Krista Saberova

Camila Gonzalez Corea IRL, video, 2018

Camila Gonzalez Corea IRL, video, 2018