Returning a name: how to make individuals visible 23 March 2023 Gender and sexual politics through an intersectional lens A picture containing text, colorful Description automatically generated Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Tímea Junghaus, 2020 What does adding a name do? How does it challenge hegemonic art histories? Identity Is the crisis can't you see Identity, Identity When you look in the mirror Do you see yourself Do you see yourself On the TV screen Do you see yourself in the magazine When you see yourself Does it make you scream When you look in the mirror Do you smash it quick Do you take the glass And slash you wrists Did you do it for fame Did you do it in a fit Did you do it before you read about it Identity by X-Ray Spex 1978 A picture containing sky, outdoor Description automatically generated Delaine LeBas, Butterfly Ball, Vogue Italia 98, https://delainelebas.com/works/gypsy-couture/ Fenella Lowell A drawing of a person Description automatically generated with low confidence A drawing of a person Description automatically generated with low confidence A picture containing linedrawing Description automatically generated Sketches of Fenella Lowell by József Rippl-Rónai (1861 –1927) 1910, Hungarian National Museum József Rippl-Rónai: My models in my garden in Kaposvár, 1911 (GM) A picture containing text, indoor, fabric Description automatically generated Olga Máté (1878-1961), Portrait of Fenella Lowell. 1910 c. © Hungarian Museum of Photography A person holding a guitar Description automatically generated Gwen Jon (1876–1939), Nude Girl, 1909/1910, Tate Britain A painting of a person Description automatically generated with medium confidence Nan Condron A statue of a person Description automatically generated with medium confidence Jacob Epstein, Nan, 1909, Tate Britain “Condron was a bohemian and Epstein sought a likeness that was expressive of her character and presence as well as her appearance.” Tate Gallery label, October 2020 Text Description automatically generated From: Dictionary of Artists' Models, edited by Jill Berk Jiminez, 2001 A drawing of a person Description automatically generated with low confidence Jacob Epstein, Nan, 1909, Tate Britain Text Description automatically generated with medium confidence Is the personal still political? – Or: your body is (still) a battleground https://www.romaniherstory.com/ A picture containing text Description automatically generated Omara (Mara Oláh): My Eye Operation, 1989, oil, fiberboard, Collection of FROKK. “As an uneducated artist, I became a naive painter, but the real reason for my recognition lies in my Roma identity. If I did not experience on my own skin the minutes, days, years that only a gypsy could experience, I would be a dreary painter. If I didn’t experience a lot of humiliation, shaming, disdain, hatred, there would not be this otherness in my paintings that makes me unique. With all my pictures, I want to express emotions, tell stories, fight for freedom against injustice.” Omara, https://secondaryarchive.org/artists/mara-olah-omara/ OMARA (1945–2020) Graphical user interface, website Description automatically generated http://www.omara.hu Markéta Šestáková (*1952) A picture containing text, bedclothes, fabric Description automatically generated Children’s dream, 2010 A picture containing text Description automatically generated Mother Nature, 2012 Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (*1978) A picture containing indoor, floor, ceiling, gallery Description automatically generated Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Re-enchanting the World, exhibition view, Polish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice. Biennale. Image courtesy Zachęta National Gallery of Art. Photo: Daniel Rumiancew. “For Mirga-Tas, the stories of real women who often live outside of ideology rooted in a meritocratic system become examples of emancipation and strength. According to the artist, her work speaks about women of her community to emphasize their ability to “foster the reality around them,” not the least because of their role in rearing the new generation.” Alexandra Timonina, “Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: Re-enchanting the World, Polish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale”, Art Margins, 2023 A picture containing text Description automatically generated Silvia Federici, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons,2018 A picture containing colorful Description automatically generated Siostry (Phenia) 2019 https://ingart.pl/pl/kolekcja/artysci/malgorzata_mirga_tas A picture containing text, bedclothes, fabric Description automatically generated Delaine Le Bas 2020 A picture containing person, indoor Description automatically generated Delaine LeBas: Élő szobor-sorozat /Living Sculpture Series, 2012 “We are stolen artefacts, physically, mentally, artistically. Even now in 2015 we are still seen and contextualised by everyone else but ourselves. How we are perceived by 'others' is still valued more important than how we see ourselves in the world view. We have been and continue to be stereotyped out of our own existence; our mere presence as human beings is a contested site. A colonialist way of seeing dominates the language that surrounds us and many others still, and continues to try and suppress us. Artistically across practice I continue to question this. My body as artefact, the object, the artistic site. A living sculpture. The works take place within the gallery setting and on the street. The multiplicity of my identity and my questioning of this is an ongoing everyday artistic unravelling of what it means to always to be seen by outside positions. Orientalism and it's legacy still infiltrates ways of seeing and in order to be seen a different space needs to be created that refuses to speak in the language that has continued and allowed our bodies to be objectified, highly sexualised and stereotyped.I say no to Identity theft. I say no to who you think I am. I say no to what you think I should look like. The gaze that is put upon us is disrupted. The 'passing' of being white is played upon and the true historical legacy that continues to dominate our identity is exposed for the antiquated and exclusion based structure that it is. To question these structures that are based in 'old fashioned' ways of thinking and seeing is to question ideas of culture itself and who owns this in terms of visual representation, historical and academic documentation.” (Introduction for the Say No to Identity Theft – Exhibition at Gallery8, March, 2015.) Emilia Rigová (*1980) A picture containing person, dark Description automatically generated Crossing B(l)ack 2017 Digital Photograph 130x100cm, C-Print, aluminium dibond 130 x 100 cm The impulse for this work is the author’s light skin-color which allows her to pass in the society as a non-Roma. The self-portrait is a declaratory act of making herself visible as a Roma and simultaneously self-stylization as a black Madonna, i.e. an iconic female figure with whom Roma could identify. https://emiliarigova.com/a-self-portrait.html A picture containing floor, person, wall, indoor Description automatically generated Emilia Rigová, Transgressing the past, shaping the future, 2017 A picture containing text, person, dancer Description automatically generated Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-two-fridas.jsp A picture containing grass, building, outdoor, person Description automatically generated A picture containing building, outdoor, sidewalk, stone Description automatically generated Icons of the Peripheral Czarna Gora, Krakow, Banská Bystrica 2014 / PL, SK / “For the work Icons of the Peripheral (2014), I created life-size face-in-the hole boards which represented Roma people in their home setting. The photos were taken in the Roma settlement in Czarna Gora, Poland. I installed these photo-objects in main squares of various towns and cities. In this project, I worked with the visual archetype of Roma and presented it as a cut out, the familiar object used as a fairground attraction, whereby the Roma becomes a pop icon. With these objects, I recreated a fairground setting in which people could “become a Roma” for the moment the picture is taken. My aim was to point out that we have no power over the circumstances of our life into which we have been born, and ask the viewer: would you like to be Roma?” A collage of a house Description automatically generated with low confidence Selma Selman (*1991) https://www.selmanselma.com Graphical user interface, text Description automatically generated Robert Gabris (*1986) A picture containing mosquito net, bath Description automatically generated A picture containing mosquito net, baby bed, bath Description automatically generated