WOMEN'S LIBERATION


After the exhibition on Pop Art it seemed like the right time to visit Le Musée de la Monnaie and see « Women House ». Those years in the 60’s and 70’s when Women too stood up for their rights. The French were really not into the Women’s Liberations movement. I arrived back in Paris in the late 70’s and had been part of the movement in Australia. However, I have absolutely no memory of women screaming for their rights, just as they should have done. In actual fact, I never really belonged to any feminist group. I was divorced with a small child and just had to get on with living and earning enough so Nicky could have a decent life. I did want to see this exhibition and was not disappointed.  

Women  House is the meeting of two concepts: a gender - the female - and a space - the domestic one. Public space was always masculine while the domestic space was for a long time the prison or the shelter of women. One got married, gave up a job and became a housewife and then a mother.  39 female artists of the 20th and 21st centuries are part of the exhibition. I only knew a few of them. Cindy Sherman…Louise Bourgeois…the whole atmosphere threw me into a world which I don’t think I ever knew. 

I do remember Virginia Woolf(1929), as she encouraged women in her essay "A Room of One's Own", to find a room that they could "lock up without disturbance”. One of the reasons I could never live with someone is that I wanted that room of my own and my own space, most of the time.  Somewhere to escape to …we saw this symbol in the exhibition.
The exhibition's eight chapters display the complexity of the possible viewpoints on the subject: not only are they feminist (Desperate Housewives); they're also poetic (A Room of One's Own), political (Mobile Homes) or nostalgic (Doll's House) : This time I really liked the different chapters but at the end of the exhibition, very strange, I didn’t remember feeling part of any of them!
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
Martha Rosler "Woman with a Vacuum 1966-72

Birgit JÜRGENSSEN - Kitchen Apron - 1975




Karina Mack "Ironing Dream" -1975
Karina is Austrian (1940-). Ironing she sees as a contemplative act - full of irony. She lies down on the board and declares "death of the housewife"!
Birgit JÜRGENSSEN - "Scrubbing the Floor" - 1975
Birgit JÜRGENSSEN - "Housewives working " -1975

                                     

Birgit JÜRGENSSEN "Housewife" - 1973
Penny Slinger (1947-) "Exorcism House" - 1977


A DOLL'S HOUSE

Laure Tixier - Different houses in felt


 
Laure Tixier (1972-) "Plaid Houseé" -2008



Rachel Whiteread - "Modern Chess Set" - 2005


MARKS
This section related to absence. That of a body or of a place -like a matress, parts of something that were no longer there...

Heidi Bucher "Mental Institutuion-1988

Isa Melsheimer (1968-)"Beistegui" -2010

Isa Melsheimer (1968-)"Beistegui" -2010
 

 
Nazgol Ansarinia (1979-) Here she is testifying to the rapid changes in Teheran in recent years. To build houses and flats, massive destructution has caused loss of memory forever.


 
 Sheila Pepe (1959-) "Mr Slit" -2007






 









MOBILE HOMES
What I didn't know that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new generation of women artists began to explore "alternative lifestyles" through shelters that explored concepts such as nomadism, exile, the individual versus the collective, mobility and escape. Quite a programme...
Lucy Orta "Body Architecture -Collective Wear 4 Persons"



FEMMES MAISONS (Women Homes) 
The initial association between the female body and the home was made in a series of paintings by Louise Bourgeois (1945-47). It showed at once how women were being devoured by the home. 50 years later she explored the same theme with her spider series . The spider represents the protective mother and her egg filled belly is a lair. That is something I learnt at the exhibition. I know her spiders very well!

Louise Bourgeois "Spider" 1994
 
Louise Bourgeois "Spider" 1994


Louise Bourgeois "Spider" 1994







 
Louise Bouegeois "Femme-Maison" 1944
 Of course Niki de Saint Phalle created her series of "Nanas Maisons..your imagination can run free. 


Niki de Saint Phalle
Laurie Simmons (1949-) "Walking House" -1989

Elsa Sahal (1975-) "Genealogical Cave" - 2006

 
Anne-Marie Schneider (1962-) Mouth/Fireplace -2006



And taken directly from the Homepage
Women House's 39 artists come from four continents; they span from historic figures such as Claude Cahun to a young generation: Mexican artist Pia Camil, Iranian Nazgol Ansarinia, Portuguese Joana Vasconcelos, German Isa Melsheimer or the French Laure Tixier and Elsa Sahal ... Some of the names are already famous (Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint Phalle, Martha Rosler, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, Rachel Whiteread), others are the subject of recent rediscoveries connected to a rereading of the History of Art in terms of gender parity (Birgit Jürgenssen, Ana Vieira, Laetitia Parente, Heidi Bucher).
Monumental works will be exhibited in Monnaie de Paris’ courtyards, rendered public and accessible free of charge from the Fall 2017 as part of a walking tour linking the Pont des Arts to the Pont Neuf







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