Article from It's Nice That
First off could you explain what happened?
I was in my final term of my foundation diploma in art and design, where you work on a personal project. I was interested in looking at the intersection between art and advertising, and how that can be used to advocate for social change. My tutor and I were talking about my idea to do something around the recent revelations around Harvey Weinstein and sexual misconduct in Hollywood, and he suggested I maybe dial down the feminism a bit.
What was it about the work that he reacted to?
One of my pieces was a tribute to the Guerrilla Girls, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988). I did a version that was The Advantages of Being a Hollywood Actress. My art class is predominantly female, and a lot of the work can feature feminist themes, in sheer virtue of the way we experience the world. It’s an issue for us. For a lot of men, feminism is something they can choose to engage with, whereas for most women I know, whether they call it feminism or not, it’s something that directly affects them if they feel they’re not being treated equally.
What was your reaction to your tutor’s comment?
I went home and thought about it for a while. I wasn’t horrified – I know that teacher and he’s always been slightly provocative, but I was exasperated by the comment. So I decided to create something in response to it.
I’d been to the Mother London Not for Sale exhibition of their non-commercial work a few weeks earlier. I loved pieces like the Free the Feed campaign, where they used a giant nipple to try and normalise breastfeeding in public. I’d already started thinking about how I might use physical objects in my work. When I was thinking about the phrase my teacher used, I found myself fixating on the word “dial”, and wondering whether I could actually make a dial. I began to think, if there were a feminist dial, what would it look like? I decided to mock one up. I remembered a phrase “complicit in my own dehumanisation”, used by musician Kathleen Hanna, and placed it on one side of the dial. On the other side of the dial I put the phrase “raging feminist”, because that seems to be the general perception of feminism – one of anger. Although I don’t like the assumption that every feminist is perpetually angry, why wouldn’t we be, when we don’t have equality? I wanted my piece to reclaim the term “raging feminist”.
Tell us what happened next, and why you think the piece resonated online.
I put it on Twitter, because we’re encouraged to share our work, and it went viral. I think there were a few things at play. Firstly, I think the message of the piece resonated with women. Many women know what it’s like to be in a situation in which you’re encouraged to be “less feminist” or “dial it down” in some way – “it” being whatever isn’t considered palatable to those around you. I also shared this piece at a time in which feminism is becoming more mainstream, and we’re learning more and more about how pervasive gender inequality is, even in the western world. So it was quite timely in that respect.
I do think posting the story behind it helped. People love it, especially on Twitter, if anyone’s perceived as being vaguely disrespectful of authority. People love a clapback. It’s simple, and quick and easy to “get” and maybe that’s stemmed from my interest in advertising. My older work would’ve been more text-heavy and complicated. This is stripped back, which helps on social media, where everything is so immediate.
What’s been the good and bad of the reaction online?
The good has been having so many people engage with my work. I’ve been sharing stuff online sporadically over the past few years and got maybe 50 likes, max. It’s difficult to put yourself out there online, you question yourself all the time. So this response has been amazing. People have written to me, and publications like Newsweek interviewed me, and that blew my mind. Plus Mark Ruffalo retweeted it which was surreal. I’m happy it happened, and I’ve been offered opportunities off the back of it. It was featured in Airbnb’s International Women’s Day showcase, and was commissioned by The Sunday Times Style for IWD too.
Alex's other work
This piece is inspired by Guerrilla Girls, a group of activists and artists I am going to be focusing on in my further research. This particular piece is in the style of work they have produced in the past.
This is in response to a thread Alex found on mumsnet, the comment is a woman exclaiming her frustration in trying to find simple, basic clothes that do the job without them being over the top. Over the top in the way of too many frills, holes in unnecessary places, buttons and glitter, all because she is a woman and society says that is what we should want to wear.
The piece below is a collab with Lewis and the brief was: Create a Nike-led campaign that will help create the environment needed for professional footballers to feel confident enough to be openly gay, and reach 100% of their potential.
There is a lot of issues in the sport industry in terms of LGBT+ issues, as well as plain sexism and gender inequality.
No comments:
Post a Comment