Five Women Artist

Just like many other eras, contemporary art is still greatly male dominant. However, the times have changed- many women are breaking new grounds with their work. Today, women are using their art to address many issues in the world; for example, women use photography, painting, fashion design illustration and many more artistic talents to voice their opinions or even rebel. Before the feminist movement, women have always been invisible. They were often denied exhibitions and gallery representations based on the sole fact that they were women. As the technology advanced, women started to use alternative materials that were connected to their gender to create their work, such as, textiles or performance art and video. One of the most well-known pieces of feminist art is in Brooklyn Museum. The Dinner part consist of a large banquet table with place settings for thirty-nine notable women from history and mythology. The installation has gold chalices and porcelain plates painted with butterfly and vulva inspired designs representing mother nature and the vagina. The installation of The Dinner Party revised the history of feminism during 1970s. The intricate of textile and porcelain, Judy Chicago reclaimed the realm of "high art, to include what had traditionally been relegated to the lower status of "woman's work". As the technology advances, women started to use various mediums to illuminate different problems in our society.

The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago

 Today, many artist use photograph, performance, crafts or just simple work of art to talk about sexuality or race and gender, etc. One of the five women artist that uses her art to challenge the roles and representations of women in the modern society is Cindy Sherman. Sherman's career break through was in early 1980s when her series of 69 black and white photographs, Untitled Films Stills achieved international recognition as the gems of feminist photography. The series consisted of photographs showing artist in different roles and settings, resulting in images so powerfully reminiscent of films stills typically of Italian neorealism of American film noir. In the Untitled Film Stills artist poses in various stereotypical female roles inspired by 1950s and 60s Hollywood, Film noir, B movies and European art-house films. They represent cliches or feminine types( the office girl, bombshell, girl on the run, housewife or etc) "that are deeply embedded in the cultural imagination"(Cindy Sherman). The character of all these women are always looking away from the camera. Through her photographs she tried to reveal gender as an unstable and constructed positions which suggest that there is so innate biological female identity. On the contrary, women adopt several roles and identities depending on their circumstances. Therefore the roles in the Untitled Film Stills series varies from an immature schoolgirl to an attractive seducer and from a glamour diva to a caring housewife.

From Untitled Film Series

Barbra Kruger is an conceptual artist that is considered a part of the pictures generation. She is widely known for her work consisting of monochrome photographs overlaid with slogans that deal with cultural construction of power, identity and sexuality. Using the techniques of advertising and mass communication, Barbra Kruger address the issues of language and signs, all in order to explore universal subjects of gender and identity. Some critics say that Barbra address the media and politics in their native tongue: tabloid, sensational, authoritative and direct. Kruger's words and images merge the commercial and art worlds. One of her well-known photograph is "Your body is a battle ground". Kruger made this iconic image for the Women's march on Washington in 1989 after a string of anti abortion laws began to undermine Roe v. Wade.

Your Body is a Battleground, Barbra Kruger 1989

Nan Goldin, is another internationally acclaimed American contemporary artist from New York. She is well-known for her work in photography. Since her first gallery exhibition in 1973, Goldin has been steadily gaining attention for her intensely personal and spontaneous photographs that deal with subjects of sexuality and gender and LGTBQ community. Her most seen photograph is 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, which depicts drugs use, violent couples and as well as autobiographical moments. Her slide show of The Ballad of sexual Dependency focuses on the "marginalized people". The idea of her slide show was to tell the audience that there is no such thing as "marginalized people", they are the world and many people like them shared similar life style- they did not think what straight people thought of them.

Nan Goldin

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian female artist and one of the best known Persian artist in the Western world. Her work mostly consist of photographs, film and video. The mesmerizing photographs and films offer a unique glimpse of the cultural, religious and political circumstances that influences the identities of Muslim women worldwide. Her art work centers on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public and private life, antiquity and modernity. The work of Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Shirin Neshat's 1998 new media art work titled Turbulent is a video showing performances of a man and a woman. One of her films called Women without Men (2009) which won many awards is about four women- including a political activist, a prostitute and a would be mother set in context of 1950s Iran.

Soliloquy series, 1999

Kara Walker, a contemporary African-American artist from NY, explores subjects like identity, gender, sexuality, violence, race and slavery. She uses large scale art to raise gender and racial issues. One of her large scale public projects, A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, drew a lot of attention. It is an enormous sugarcoated woman-sphinx which has undeniably features and wearing only an Aunt Jemima kerchief and earrings. The central themes of the exhibit included race, oppression, and labor.  

A Subtlety, Kara Walker 2014

There are many more women with great talents that uses different medium to display and illuminate the problems in our world. Art is a powerful tool to make people aware of such issues.