Ewa Partum (born 1945, Grodzisk Mazowiecki near Warsaw, Poland) is a poetry artist, performance artist, filmmaker, mail artist, and conceptual artist.
Ewa Partum | |
|---|---|
 Ewa Partum, Exercises, 1972 | |
| Born | 1945 Grodzisk Mazowiecki |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Known for | conceptual art |
Beginning in 1963, Partum studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź. She then went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1965, where she studied in the painting department. [1] She gained her diploma for her work with poetry as art, and she received her diploma in 1970. [2]
Partum engages in linguistic and performative play in an attempt to discover new artistic language. This search for a "new language" is rooted in her belief that painting has exhausted its potential to generate new or transformative ideas. [1] Partum's work also is motivated by touching on issues such as the notion of public space, the situation of women, female subjectivity and the political context of the 1980s. [1]
Partum's work explores issues of female identity, including the gender bias of the art world. At the beginning of the 1970s, while the amount of artist run institutions increased, there was also a development of a new paradigm that perpetuated the dominant, institutionalized model of art, which Partum considered confining. [3] In interviews, she speaks about the difficulties and discrimination that she has faced as a female performance artist. This bias inspired her decision to perform naked in many pieces. At one point, Partum declared she would perform naked until women in the art world obtained equal rights. [1] In interviews, she has spoken of the naked performances, saying "In their interpretations, many critics concentrate on the use of my naked body in my actions without actually understanding that for me it was a matter of creating a sign: a sign pointing into one direction. It was a tautological and not, as so many are inclined to believe, an egocentric strategy... My naked body is merely a tool. I'm very focused, not making any spontaneous movements. When the performance is finished I bow towards my audience as a virtuoso after a concert..." [4]
Partum's public work began in 1969 and continued through the seventies, integrating poetry and performance. In a performance called Change, in 1974, Partum had a makeup artist work on half of her naked body in front of an audience. [5] She announced that she was a work of art, making her body an element of the feminist discourse. This can be used as an example of essentialism, in that art is about the woman's body, and using the body as a canvas in feminist performance.
Another work, Self-Identification (1980), included photomontages of her naked figure superimposed against scenes of Warsaw, among pedestrians, next to a policewoman, and in front of the presidential place, showing the controversial nature of the naked female body. [6] The piece's title speaks to the complicated and fraught search for a female identity in a world in which the female body is often observed as a source of shock or shame.
Partum's work often focuses on the harm of traditional gender biases and expectations. For example, in Stupid Woman (1981)she performed exaggerated compliance to norms of female submissiveness and stupidity by "kiss[ing] hands of members of the audience, pour[ing] alcohol over [her] head, writ[ing] with whipped cream on the floor 'sweet art' - in other words act[ing] like a drunk and stupid woman." [4] In another work, Women, Marriage is Against You! (1980), she dressed in a wedding dress and wrapped herself in transparent foil, topped with a sign that said "For Men." [6] Then, she cut through the dress and the foil, emerging naked.
Since 1971, she has been creating "Poems By Ewa," conceptual poetry in the shape of poetic objects in which she often imprints her lips. Early conceptual-poetic pieces include Active Poetry, in which Partum used the wind to scatter cut-out letters in a variety of landscapes, using their random distribution to create poetry. [6] Her later poems compose of a strong feminist and social tone, although it is never stated in a clear or obvious way to the viewer. In one of Partum's performances during the period of martial law in 1982, she is naked and wearing red lipstick, and formed the word “Solidarnosc,” meaning solidarity, one by one with her lips on a piece of white paper. [7] This expresses one of the themes of her work that includes parodying the manners in which women try to conform to men's idealized expectations of them. In an exhibition on the subject of the Berlin Wall, she photographs herself naked in high-heels, and holding up a big letter “O” in her right hand and a “W” in her left, signifying Ost-West Schatten, or east–west shadows. [7]
Partum's films act both as documentation of her poetic and performative work and as explorations of film as a medium, in line with the structural cinema of the 1960s. For example, in Tautological Cinema (a series of short films made between 1973 and 1974), Partum examines the automated nature and materiality of film. [8] The content of one piece, Ten Meters of Film, draws a simple correlation between film length and running time, denoting on the screen the number of meters of film that have run through the projector (up to ten). Another short film display the artist's face in a variety of scenes with at least one feature obscured. The film calls into question the ability of the artist to fully communicate an idea, arguing that once the work is observed by another, the authority of the artist is lost. Of the films and of film as a medium, Partum as said, "It’s not dealing with aesthetics. It’s rather a new sort of philosophical practice that operates in the area in which the relation between the film image and the camerawork covers the whole interest in the film itself.” [8]
Partum also worked as the organizer and curator of a very influential mail art gallery from 1971 through 1977. The gallery, Galeria Adres, displayed the work of Fluxus artists, and others. Partum described the gallery as "a place, a situation, an opportunity, an offer, for information, proposition, documentation, speculation, provocation, exposition". [3] As part of the gallery, Partum additionally published catalogs and books. [6]
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Partum's work was often affected by Polish censors, who refused to allows its distribution in publications. [6]
In July 2013, the Frac Lorraine in Metz, Francep held an exhibition entitled, “Bad Girls: A Collection in Action”, honoring female artists who dedicated their work to deconstructing established order and creating room for freedom, experience, and life, changing the audience's vision of the future and encouraging social change.[ citation needed ]
Several retrospectives of Partum's work have occurred, including Ewa Partum: The Legality of Space at the Wyspa Institute of Art (2006). [9] In interviews, Partum has celebrated the work of retrospective exhibitions, in that they allow the audience and critics to "trace the genealogy of the artist's language." [4]
Exhibitions of her work include: [1]
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. She is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American artists of the post–World War II era. Born in Havana, Cuba, Mendieta left for the United States in 1961.
Carolee Schneemann was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. Originally a painter in the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Schneeman was uninterested in the masculine heroism of New York painters of the time and turned to performance-based work, primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relation to social bodies. Although renowned for her work in performance and other media, Schneemann began her career as a painter, saying: "I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas." Her works have been shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the London National Film Theatre, and many other venues.
Zofia Kulik is a Polish artist living and working in Łomianki (Warsaw), whose art combines political criticism with a feminist perspective.
Katarzyna Kozyra is a Polish video artist. She studied German studies at the University of Warsaw (1985–1988). In 1993, she also graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where she studied sculpture and Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. Kozryra received a Paszport Polityki award in 1997 as the most promising artist in Poland. She has exhibited internationally since 1997, at venues including Brown University and Carnegie International in the U.S.
Yocheved (Juki) Weinfeld is an artist, museum educator and developer of interactive exhibitions for children. She studied at the Tel Aviv University and the State Art Teacher's College (Israel); at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town in South Africa).
Feminist art is a category of art associated with the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience in their lives. The goal of this art form is to bring a positive and understanding change to the world, leading to equality or liberation. Media used range from traditional art forms, such as painting, to more unorthodox methods such as performance art, conceptual art, body art, craftivism, video, film, and fiber art. Feminist art has served as an innovative driving force toward expanding the definition of art by incorporating new media and a new perspective.
Penny Slinger, sometimes Penelope Slinger, is a British-born American artist and author based in California. As an artist, she has worked in different mediums, including photography, film and sculpture. Her work has been described as being in the genres of surrealism and feminist surrealism. Her work explores the nature of the self, the feminine and the erotic.
Mary Kelly is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer.
Martha Wilson is an American feminist performance artist and the founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive art organization. Over the past four decades she has developed and "created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformation, and 'invasions' of other peoples personas". She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and an Obie Award and a Bessie Award for commitment to artists’ freedom of expression. She is represented by P•P•O•W gallery in New York City.
Jessica Yatrofsky is an American artist, photographer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn, NY.
Ewa Gargulinska is a Polish painter. She is known for her Romantic Expressionist work. Gargulinska was a visiting lecturer at The School of Visual Arts in New York, US, from 1982 to 1983 and Central Saint Martins, London, England, from 1984 to 2011. Gargulinska currently lives and works in London, England.
Natalia Lach-Lachowicz was a Polish artist who worked with paint, photography, drawing, performance, and video art. Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2017, described her as "a neglected early-1970s Polish-born pioneer of feminist avant garde image making".
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary art. It also seeks to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. The movement challenges the traditional hierarchy of arts over crafts, which views hard sculpture and painting as superior to the narrowly perceived 'women's work' of arts and crafts such as weaving, sewing, quilting and ceramics. Women artists have overturned the traditional view by, for example, using unconventional materials in soft sculptures, new techniques such as stuffing, hanging and draping, and for new purposes such as telling stories of their own life experiences. The objectives of the feminist art movement are thus to deconstruct the traditional hierarchies, represent women more fairly and to give more meaning to art. It helps construct a role for those who wish to challenge the mainstream narrative of the art world. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, and often including such self-organizing tactics as the consciousness-raising group, the movement began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called second wave of feminism. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period."
Ewa Kuryluk is a Polish artist. She is a pioneer of textile installation, painter, photographer, art historian, novelist and poet, and the author of numerous books, written in Polish and English, many of which have been translated into other languages. She has had over fifty solo exhibitions, participated in many group shows and created outdoor installations throughout the world. Her work can be seen in the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and Poznań, as well as in public and private collections in Europe, USA, Latin America and Japan.
Tina Keane is a British artist who has worked with film, video, digital media, and performance, and been a forerunner of multimedia art in the UK. Reflecting a feminist perspective, her works have often explored gender roles, sexuality, and political concerns. She has stated that her work is primarily about "identity and play".
WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution was an exhibition of international women's art presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from March 4–July 16, 2007. It later traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, where it was on view February 17–May 12, 2008. The exhibition featured works from 120 artists and artists' groups from around the world.
Bogna Burska is a Polish playwright and visual artist known for installations, spatial photography and video. Her art is presented from a feminist perspective. Her initial painting compositions were narratives of congealed blood forms made with red paints applied by fingers on the walls, canvas and glass.
Cornelia Schleime is a German painter, performer, filmmaker and author. Born in East Berlin under the GDR, she studied painting and graphic arts at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts before becoming a member of the underground art scene.
Elżbieta Jabłońska is a Polish contemporary visual artist, and professor. She has served as the Chair of Drawing and has taught art at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń since 1996. Jablonska is known for photography, film, installation art, and performance art. Her artwork engages with Polish stereotypes and myths of women, mothers, and the Catholicism. She lives in Bydgoszcz in northern Poland, in a farming cooperative.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
