Power to the Women \(^~^)/

Today, I will be sharing about the feminist art movement as well as feminist artists like me. The feminist art movement is efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences. The art movement also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. It began in the 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s. It has been called "the most influential international movement of any during the postwar period" and its effects continue to the present. As part of the movement, I have created numerous works with the theme of feminism, portraying women in a greater and positive light, and disproving misconceptions. I would like to bring to light 2 prominent artists, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. Judy Chicago is an American feminist artist, and a work I would like to highlight is The Birth Project.

From 1980 until 1985, Chicago created The Birth Project. The piece used images of childbirth to celebrate woman's role as mother. The installation reinterpreted the Genesis creation narrative, which focused on the idea that a male god created a male human, Adam, without the involvement of a woman. She described the piece as revealing a "primordial female self hidden among the recesses of my soul...the birthing woman is part of the dawn of creation." Miriam Scharpiro was a canadian born artist based in America, and a pioneer of the feminist art movement. She has also had success in abstract expressionism. Miriam Schapiro famously rediscovered traditionally feminine women’s art by using pieces of embroidery, threads, knitting, scraps, sequins, buttons, and other material from crafts and decorative arts. She combined these in collage projects to create what she called “Femmage.” In creating these "Femmages", she insisted that society should revise the value placed on women’s creations by furthering their use in new and innovative art projects. Below is Court Jester by Miriam Schapiro, created in 2007.

In many ways, the three of us are very similar in wanting to portray women as equal individuals, and assert our importance in society. Girl power woohooo