I have been somewhat mentally weighed down of late due to a constant battle going on in my own head. A civil war of my conscience I guess you could say: To come out or not to come out. In our culture the term "coming out of the closet" refers to a gay person, who I guess has been pretending they were straight, "coming out" to everyone and admitting they are gay. This term has always bothered me because it implies that there are only two options.
1) To be stashed away in a closet, your true desires hidden from the world.
2) To be "Out" and open to ridicule, constantly having to justify yourself and your "decision".
Neither of these seem like decent options to me... The reason I have had this particular phrase on my mind is because I feel like it applies to me as a feminist artist.
1) I keep my feminist ideals to myself and try and get ahead by buying into the boys club.
2) I push my beliefs and ideas forward at the expense of being alienated and risking my career and aspirations.
As a female artist I am subject to certain discrimination's and limitations solely because I am a woman. This isn't purely speculation on my part, it is a fact that 48% of MFA holders are men(yes, more women have Masters degrees in the fine arts than men) yet 96% of gallery sales go to men. Does this have anything to do with the quality of a woman's work versus the quality of a man's work? Of course not, there are many female artists who submit there work to galleries under a mans name rather than their own and the curator isn't going to know the difference.
What is even more frustrating is that as a feminist artist I am doubly subject to discrimination in the art world. It has already started happening in my painting class here at the college. Since my teacher has found out I am a feminist she treats me differently than she treats the other female students(not to mention the male students) in the class. At the beginning of every class she brings in books of different artists to show us and the other day she grabs a book and says loud enough for the whole group to hear "here Taryn, you will like this one, she is a feminist". Not hey I think you would like this artist because her style is similar to yours or I think you could learn a lot from the techniques this artist uses. No, I get a hey she is a feminist and you are a feminist so must like her work. She finds some weird way to bring up my being a feminist every class period like it is something that needs to be explained or justified. When she critiques my work 9 times out of 10 it is critiqued in a different context than the other students, like I am "special".
What is going on in my art class is irritating but it doesn't really affect my life yet. I have a bad feeling about it, however. Like it is the beginning of a long series of unfortunate events who's ultimate goal is to put me in a box, or in this case a closet.
Why can't a person just be a person rather than a straight person or a gay person. Why cant I just be an artist rather than a female artist or a feminist artist? Why is my work extrinsically less valuable because I have a vagina and I am not content to play along with the role in society that vagina has assigned me? Why do I have to decide whether it is best for my career to stay in the feminist closet or to come out shouting like I want to?
Girl I feel you. Also, I think our blog posts have some similar themes eh?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I think you are an amazing artist. I have been super impressed by what you've made in our class so far and I can only imagine your other work is just as or more unique and awesome.
Second of all, I feel you about the closet thing, and I think it's one of those where eventually, you figure out what you are not willing to compromise on and once you commit to that, you'll feel relieved, if anxious about other people's judgements. Thing is, people are going to have these bullshit thoughts about women artists and that is not going to change unless someone (that would be me and you) does something about it. As good ol' Ani diFranco says "As long as you play their game girl, you're never gonna win."
Thanks for this post :) you're awesome and you're gonna kick ass as an artist, feminist or not, woman or not.