SHUT UP YOU PATRIARCHS, SOME FEMINIST ART IS TALKING

I don’t normally visit exhibitions in company, but this time I made an exception, and press-ganged a female acquaintance to join me. The reason for this was that the show I visited, “Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012” at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, is an exhibition of all female artists. As a mere male, I didn’t quite feel equipped or welcome enough in my own right to deal with this.

Introducing identity issues is problematic enough when you do it into the wider society, against a background of, say, social justice or inclusivism; but it is even more of a problem when it is done in an area like art, which should essentially be meritocratic. What we all really want when we visit an exhibition is to encounter genius and talent, regardless of the number of Y-chromosomes involved.

On the other hand, it could be argued that concentrating on just women and Asian artists might help towards a sense of narrative and meaning. The problem with this notion, however, is that the group in question is such a vast and diverse one that it can’t really be summed up in a coherent narrative unless you resort to some of the feminist shibboleths about women everywhere being oppressed. Whether such gender despotism is a fact or not is beside the point, because nothing kills art as surely as didacticism and an earnest, heavy-handed message, even if it is justified.

Despoiled Shore 1993 Nalini Malani

Such preachiness is definitely one of the notes sounded by this exhibition, with artworks spoiled either by their all-too-obvious message or a wilful embrace of ugliness construed somehow as feminist empowerment. Indian artist Nalini Malani’s large, messy canvases are an example of both tendencies. They throw up sweeping but indistinct accusations of male brutality and leech out aesthetic qualities to strengthen the depressing mood of victimization.

There are also art works that look like the box-ticking products of positive-thinking feminist workshops, like Singaporean artist Amanda Heng’s photographs of her and her mum that seek to “affirm” their relationship in the most dull and dead pan way possible.

Land of Golgotha 1984 Imelda Cajipe Endaya

Another point that might grate after a while is the feminist critique of society that fails to critique the femmes themselves. Women are, after all, a massive part of any society, and if something is wrong with society they can’t be entirely blameless. Feminism, like a lot of present day victimologies, often likes to pretend that nothing is anybody’s fault except for that tiny minority of powerful men, who are by implication pure evil.

In Mao Ishikawa’s photos of Philippine women drawn to lives of prostitution and semi-prostitution in Okinawa, this is implicitly tied to the "Great Satan" (i.e. America). While prostitution has long been a road out of grinding poverty for many poor women, it should also be remembered that it is not the only road, is not one that men have much access to, and that it represents moral choice by the individual. Any critique of prostitution should not be solely limited to economic and social factors.

Photo: Mao Ishikawa

The artworks that work best are the ones that resist the exhibition’s grand feminist narrative, either by their subtlety, playful abstruseness, or by appealing to aspects of humanity that simply transcend gender.

An interesting example of the latter is the work of video artist Chiharu Shiota. Her video installations “Bathroom” (1999) and “Wall” (2010) are so elemental that they move beyond gender into universal themes. In “Bathroom” she repeatedly washes herself with extremely filthy water, making a larger point about how humanity in general exists in a closed circuit with its environment.

“Wall” seems to show her own blood pulsing around her in a spaghetti-like jumble of tubes. Although she is naked in both videos we soon forget she is “a woman” and start to see her instead as a human being.

Installation view - "Spawn #3" (2001) Lin Tianmiao

We get a similar sense from one of the most impressive works at the exhibition, Chinese Artist Lin Tianmiao’s “Spawn #3” (2001). This shows the artist connected to dozens of different balls of thread. Although inspired by her experience of motherhood it also has a wider resonance, referring to our sense of connectedness with things.

Other worthy works include Chinese artist Cao Fei’s entertaining hand shadow plays, Vietnamese artist Le Hoang Bich Phuong’s charming zoomorphic paintings, and Kumi Machida’s tangential but always evocative ink paintings.

Kumi Machida paintings

Although the exhibition strives for a meaningful narrative, the diversity of the different artists – and they are very different – luckily defeats this overarching purpose. This makes for a more confused but interesting show.

But that’s just the sexist viewpoint of this male chauvinist reviewer, so what did my esteemed female companion think? Although deeply interested throughout, her final conclusion was more damning than anything I might say. According to her the show lacked that most essential of feminine qualities – emotional warmth. Ouch!

C.B.Liddell
14th March, 2014
Japan Times