"Be Aware": at the BNF, an exhibition traces a history of global and joint art
Until July 4, 2021, the National Library of France François Mitterrand welcomes ""Be Aware.A History of Women Artists "", a free documentary exhibition devoted to women's artists of the 20th century, which the Aware Association is organizing in partnership with the Equality Generation Forum, a major world feminist rally initiated by UN Women.Co-founded in 2014 by the exhibition curator and art historian Camille Morineau, Aware aims to identify and make known the work of women's artists from the 19th century, and rewrite a history of global and joint art.
This is the first physical exhibition that the AWARE association is organizing, in particular thanks to ENGIE Foundation patronage or the Chanel Foundation.Very active on the Internet, with a virtual resource center abundant of podcasts, digital images, research articles, interviews or even cartoons, the association also organizes round tables and symposia in Franceand abroad.Through its first physical exhibition, the association now wishes to address a wider audience than university and artistic circles in which it is already known.
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Camille Morineau, co-founder of Aware, exhibition curator and art historian specializing in women women
""Create, show, write, ally""
The exhibition revolves around four themes that the association has continued to explore since its inception: to create, show, write and ally.Each of these poles is available in different sub-themes and raises specific issues.
""I wanted several colors to cross to symbolize the diversity of women represented women"", the designer Matali Crossat
While in European and North American galleries only 13.7% of artists living.e.s represented.e.s are women - although they represent 60% of graduates.e.s of art schools on both sides of the Atlantic, how to make known the work of women artists?Is it relevant to organize exclusively female exhibitions, when some see it as a ""ghettoization"" of women?The importance of the collective and female solidarity is also highlighted: faced with their exclusion from the speeches of art history and cultural institutions - and the greatest precariousness that results from it - the artists women areorganized and created their own creation and exhibition spaces.This is for example the case of the Guerilla Girls, at war with the invisibility of women and people racialized in contemporary art since 1985.The feminist collective made itself known in particular by the creation of a poster placarded on the buses and walls of New York in 1989: ""Should women be naked to enter Metropolitan Museum? Less than 5 % of artistsof the modern art section are women, but 85 % of nudes are female.""Exhibition commissioners, academics and collectors - such as Peggy Guggenheim or Linda Nochlin - are also honored in their role as militant passengers who have worked to make artists visible.
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The masked feminist collective of the Gorilla Girls, paper photographed by the artist Louise Nelson
A consumer exhibition
With pops in pops, light but solid colors, the exhibition has been designed to be traveling, modular and easily removable.Because the BNF is only the first step in a long journey through all of France and the world.""BE AWARE"" will soon take up its districts in Berlin (from July 14 to September 16, 2021), then at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (late 2021).""The exhibition was designed to get out of museums, and be shown in various places intended for the general public, such as libraries or the Berlin Templehof which is a former airport,"" comments Anaïs Roesch, manager of international development withinof the AWARE ASSOCIATION.Interaction with the public is very important.Texts (leaves, catalogs, books), which the public will be able to freely consult, will also be exhibited on the colorful grids.""I wanted a joyful scenography that does not damage the content on display.The public must be able to interact with the exhibition and touch the texts ""insists the designer Matali Crossat who thought of the scenography.""My main challenge was to include the maximum number of documents but remaining almost intangible.I didn't want partitions, or pictures.I wanted to create small islets and not walls, so that women can be put together in the presence and exchange, ""she said.
The Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), paper photographed by the artist Louise Nelson.""
""A history of co-constructed and decentrated art""
The exhibition - whose texts have notably been written by academics, commissioners and artists - will be regularly enriched over its various stops by local actors in artistic life. L’exposition a été pensée pour s’adapter aux différentes zones géographiques et culturelles qu’elle pourra parcourir, et vise a retracer ""une histoire de l’art co-construite et décentrée. L'idée est que cela puisse parler à différents publics avec des références culturelles qui leurs sont propres"", affirme Anaïs Roesch, qui a créé un programme composé de treize universitaires internationaux qui travaillent en collaboration avec l’association AWARE.
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Olabisi Obafunke Silva (1962-2019), conservative of Nigerian contemporary art and mentor of many artists.She made many women photographers known and has devoted the last years of her life to rehabilitate Nigerian post-Independence artists.
In order to reach a large and international audience, a digital application has also been developed by the association in order to make the entire exhibition available in five languages accessible accessible in five languages.
