Tuesday 8 April 2008

"Gender Trouble" - The Exhibition

As mentioned in my previous post, the exhibition of feminist art “Gender Trouble” opened on 7 April in Armenia’s capital Yerevan to coincide with the “Motherhood and Beauty Day” - “the second official holiday dedicated to women” (after 8 March) . It is not surprising therefore that one of the main messages of this exhibition, according to Shushan Harutyunyan, local journalist and good friend of mine, was that the real meaning of 8 March (International Women’s Day) has been erased from people’s memories. Instead, we keep reminded daily on a society level of the notion of women as “the fair sex” or “weaker sex”…


S.H.: “I liked the exhibition, it was rather creative exhibition. Mainly, video art was displayed there. Artists’ works were controversial. They presented with the different approaches to the subject matter. As a result, their work varied, from depicting the process of plastic surgery to grandmother at boxing training. Perceptions are subjective, of course.”






All photos from the exhibition – by Shushan Harutyunyan. Many thanks, Shushan!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for covering this exhibition. Too bad I only found out about it through your posts. Was it a one-day event? If not, until when is it on?

The distortion of March 8 in Armenia annoys me to no end. Once again, women in Armenia are only appreciated for being pretty and being good mothers. April 7 and especially March 8 have become very empty in this country.

artmika said...

Myrthe, I am not 100% sure, but as far as I understand it was a 2-day event (7-8 April). Pity you did not manage to go, would have been great to hear your opinion of the exhibit itself.

But hey I suppose you reflected in your comment above one of the most important messages from the "Gender Trouble". Sadly, it's very true. I can only hope that recent events with apparent awakenening of many Armenian women may help change the situation...

Anonymous said...

First the human being appropriates the consciousness of sexual identity. For man the models of ideal and the expectation of masculinity are connected with the search of physical strength and glory. The woman in its turn is the "slave" and dependent of femininity models.

Everything has its bounds and limitations: love, family, responsibility, life routine and so on. The life of human being is a cycle of liberations and enslavements. The overcoming of one bound is "liberation" into another bound, which he has no control over.

I represent each phase of life evolution as a limitation in perfect geometric forms, which have become the basis of emblems and symbols of different ideologies and structures.
The order of image series coincide with more stereotypical phases of human evolution: 1.Inception
2.Youth 3.Love 4.Old age 5.Death

Martin Tonoyan-Some Perfect Signs “Gender Trouble”

No other comments:))))))))))

artmika said...

I never heard of Martin Tonoyan before. Thanks for bringing his vews here. Blansh, does he have any website or something to read about his work? He seems interesting guy.

Very thoughtful start of Sunday for me.

Anonymous said...

No, Mik, i guess he haven't.