Visual images of women and girls can be used
to subjugate, oppress, and exploit women (through advertising and commodification
in consumer capitalism) yet images also document and report the violence; and
images that women artists and activists make themselves have the symbolic power
to counter and create new levels of acceptance and understanding and liberation
of women from tyranny of oppression and violence by agents of death- around the
world.
Women contemporary artists around the world
are working in the genre of self portraiture, and the politics of the personal, and
the effect of the images they create can counteract the objectified
representations of women, in what is still largely an “unconscious” subliminal
symbolic ‘war against women’ played out through images and visual
representation. Illustrating this post is an image from Australian artist Diane Mantzaris, whose work is also
discussed here, in the context of contemporary media iconography and social
media and its impacts on changing attitudes to women, in local and global media
activism.
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Diane Mantzaris
‘Garden of Eve: the Ages of Inhumanity’ 2012
206cm (Height) x 120cm (Width)
C-Type Photograph
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This week social media is filled with
images and stories of women (and men) who are fighting against violation, and
standing up for women’s and girls rights around the world; and stories of women
who are being violated by oppressive systems calling to support the women. On
this site, this week was published a popular article, in counter-balance against
oppression, the story, on this blog, of a trend of women artists, and
specifically Australian women contemporary artists who are bravely and proudly
using their own bodies in self portraiture, effectively as a powerful means of trying
to symbolically change the visual language which has oppressed women – often unconsciously
and subliminally through the mainstream and advertising “consumer” media. This
has received a tremendously positive response with thousands of page views, and
comments of support from around the world on facebook- and some of the
responses are documented here.
Social media news this week is full of
appalling stories, and graphic images, of violence against women and girls
around the world. The horrors women face are shown in
graphic images, which are often linked to causes to support through internet petition.
From Turkey death threats against Amina, a 19 year old woman who posted an
image of herself bare breasted with the words of protest written on her skin.
Stories and images of routine female genital
mutilation from Africa, a 2000-year long cultural practice that is carrying
over into England, a gruesome image of a removed cliterectomy, and story that
change is coming by increasing the knowledge of women who perform the
mutilations, and their awareness of the trauma and physical and mental harm
this causes women and girls (so that rather than being supposedly good for them
according to tradition it is in fact very bad for them)- so that they make the
changes themselves, to drop the practice.
And in the Maldives, the horrific case of
the 15 year old raped by her step-father, who gave birth to his child which was
murdered by him, and then she was sentenced to 100 lashes in public- with
photographs showing this atrocity. This is the most appalling case of blaming
and further punishing the victim for their traumatic assault. This has led to
calls around the world to boycott Maldives tourism industry, and this has begun
in force, with almost 1 and a half millions signatures to an online petition to
end public flogging and change the law in the Maldives to better protect
victims of rape and sexual abuse.
These are but three cases in the endless
number of stories of ongoing violence in what is known as the war against
women.
In all of these cases, and as it has been
for thousands of years, in the war on women, it is the centre of the women’s
fertility, reproductive systems, and inner world that is the target of attacks,
violating women’s bodies, by invasion – just as separately ‘mother earth’ has
been, and is still, violated by the invasions of rape by excessive and damaging
industrialization and destruction of the environment for profit for a few.
This manifests as dissociation, separation
of body and self, of women’s images as objective “representation” – which is
also used as a form of attempted colonizing of women’s bodies, and selves – for
profit, for instance by advertisers and porn industry. It can lead to traumatic
dissociation by those who are subjected to it as a form of internal escape of
the trauma. Contemporary medical researchers and psychologists (perhaps
surprisingly) admit to very little understanding of ‘dissociation’ and
dissociative disorders -of which the dissociative fugue a temporary form of amnesia
of self identity is one- yet these are prevalent in contemporary media society that
surrounds us: which in itself manifests as dissociative. Social media may help
to counteract that by enabling people to express themselves, not as passive
recipients, but as active contributors and agents of change.
Now it is time to reclaim what has been
repressed: our sexuality, subjectivity our inner world, our fertility our
reproductive systems, that are violated by the atrocities we know from the news
reports in local global social media. And sadly for so many from personal
experiences of traumatic attacks on the self. And at the same time to change
and reverse the violations against ‘mother nature’, and show respect and love
for what sustains us: our environment, and our mothers. We need to reverse the
horrors and appreciate the integrity and strength of the bodies of women and
girls- and men and boys, who are also violated in the rape of wars.
That is why the works of the women artists
pioneering self-portraiture that counteracts the negativity directed against
women through self-based visual symbolism are so important.
As part of the war against women, is the
subliminal effect of the violations and repressions that many women and girls
around the world, and in the western world internalize. This affects
particularly perhaps middle class women in conformist and appearance-based media
cultures, who are perpetually worried that there is something “wrong” with their
physical appearance, and feel an excessive compulsion to diet or self harm
their bodies. Such anxieties and self- doubt also boost the massive cosmetic
industries- and as we know amongst biggest growth areas for cosmetic procedures
are from western women to modify their own vaginas, as they are fearful and
anxious about their own natural shape.
Breast operations, and breast enhancement is another boom area of
cosmetic surgery which is fed by women’s anxieties - and also in some cases
their own exploitation of their bodies to make money or attract potential
suitors, wealthy husbands, which comes from internalization of the values of
women’s bodies as commodities- which saturates visual media culture.
Countering this. The therapeutic effect of
women making art from their bodies, to express their feelings, and to make political statements, is very
powerful. This was pointed out by facebook comments by a counselor, Anni from
Finland in discussion on the images by feminist artist Diane Mantzaris, in the
article posted on the Daily Fugue this week.
Diane Mantzaris shared her own experiences
of censorship and hate mail that has been sent to her that included threats,
which she compared to the threats against Amina in Turkey. Social counselor Anni Paananen, from Finland, wrote of the enormous
good that positive self based imagery of women’s bodies by them selves, does
for women and girls. And she focused on this particular powerful goddess like
portraits by Diane.
“I'm a child of the 70’s and would probably not know a lot about
the issues of the women's movement back then if it wasn't for the fact that we
still encounter the same ignorance - not just from men, but unfortunately also
from each other. I've had more than one girl crying in my office because she's
been called 'c***' (which in Swedish and Finnish is expressed with even more
negative emphasis than in English) and for me to be able to turn that
argument/reasoning totally around with something familiar also to their mothers
- and through ART! - is of great value. I'm happy there are women like Diane
today - REAL women - whose actions will have constructive and liberating
consequences for more than just one or two generations.”
She continued:
“When I encountered the art of Diane Mantzaris I was thrilled. Of course she is
provoking! - there she is, this goddess, and at first You aren't sure she's
even real, if her Eve is a photo or a painting, but two things are clear: she's
enjoying her own sexuality and You would never let your husband or spouse
anywhere near her. Of course it's not in Your interest to dwell upon her
sexuality, it scares You to the point where You feel the need to ignore it, but
honestly... are You able to? THEN all of a sudden this notion: WHY do I feel
threatened? Is it because I'm not like her? Why am I not like her? Would I want
to be? And since I'm not? - is it WRONG to be like her? Is it wrong to enjoy my
own sexuality as a woman, and to let other women enjoy theirs? And what is even
worse: to display oneself on a scene that is not the porn industry! And if it's
not wrong, then why is it so difficult? Then on the other hand, maybe to some
individuals it really is uninteresting. Then my question would be: if You for
some reason all of a sudden were totally prohibited to enjoy sex or even have
sex, would You also then be uninterested in the sexuality of others?
I'm a councellor. The young girls I've talked to who cut
themselves and starve themselves to punish themselves for being too little this
or too much that are numerous. Some of their mothers do it too. We are still
not proud to be women, and still far from enjoying our own sexuality and our
own bodies. Women still meet ignorance from men, and what is worse - we meet
ignorance from each other. I wish we could turn it around! - like Diane tries
to do within the artscene: reclaim her own - and our! - given birthright
In the war against women, the struggle may
be won through changing the “symbolic order” to adapt a term used by psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan, describing language and its effect in constructing the social
world of culture that we live in and internalize. How to do this literally and
symbolically is by women themselves changing the way women’s images are
visually manifested in cultural form, through embodiment of self-expression,
and through making interventions in the language of art, and the media. By
women taking control, and standing up for themselves, and by the oppressed
(women and men) supporting each other.
Resisting oppression of women and girls,
and fighting repression of women’s bodies and selves, sexuality and
subjectivity, and control of reproductive systems, are issues and a struggle
that women around the world, and men who support humanity, can unite on and
oppose the agents of death. That way we can make change and create a better
world for us all to live in together. Thank you again and kudos to those brave
women artists and activists around the world who are doing that now and leading
the way forward to change.
Ruth Skilbeck 28.3.2013
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