ARTISTIC RESEARCH

‘Symbiosis: Rethinking Nature’s and Women’s Body’. [Installation. 2022.]

Women have taken part in important roles throughout history but this is not commonly shown when depicting them in media and art. This made it difficult to appreciate their contribution to progress and development in the Western World. Considering history books, documentaries, and artworks in history, women are more associated with gendered roles and the concept of beauty. We simply have been given flowers to celebrate motherhood and beauty.

That said, Symbiosis: Rethinking Nature and Women’s Body suggests possible connections to rethink the place from where we contemplate the idea of gendered roles and gendered bodies, including nature’s body. By looking at digital collages inspired by archive images of women in history juxtaposed with flowers with medicinal properties, I acknowledge how many of them “healed” the next generations by challenging patriarchy with their roles and actions in Western history. 

To support this I used the book Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science, by Schiebinger (1993) who explains how during the XVII century, sex infiltrated the botanical world. This small act highlights the importance of visualizing women represented out of the stereotyped constructed roles that biased domesticity in a masculinized history (Friedan, 1963; Butler, 2006). In the same vein, Haraway stated that “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” (p.34).

Last, Federici’s inspiration nurtured the idea to rethink the bodies since in the capitalist system, the sexual division of labor made the work of women in the context of the family be perceived as a “natural resource” (Federici 2004: 97) and shaping a social identity of women being used as commodities for labor and reproduction. For example, one of the images used for these paintings includes Katti Anker Møller, who modernized the thinking about women’s rights, family, and reproduction. Her portrait is superposed with a Chinese Rose whose medicinal properties include lowering blood pressure and strengthening the body’s immunity system. 

The whole archive of images used for the paintings includes local and international examples of women educators, ski pioneers, WWII aviators, mechanics, WWI nurses, activists, and film stars. 

References

Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)
Federici, R. (2014). Caliban and the Witch (2nd. Ed). USA: Autonomedia.
Haraway, D. Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016). USA: Duke University Press.
Schiebinger, L. (1993). Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Exhibition:

(2022). Symbiosis: Rethinking Nature’s and Women’s Body. [Installation and painting]. Exhibited at Trondheim Library, TFB, Trondheim, Norway, November 22 - December 5.