Rowan Hessen: Can You Name 5 Women Artists?

Rowan Hessen
Art and Women
April 23, 2020
Professor Caçoilo

Modern Women Artists and Sexuality

     Women artists have gone through many obstacles and struggle to get where they are today. They have had to fight misogyny and stereotypes of their gender. They had to overcome people overlooking their work and their passions. It is still present, but it has gotten better extremely. Modern women artists have proved this heavily. They focus on many topics such as body, power, religion, and inequality. They reflect many of their art and topics to what is going on in the world and their beliefs. One topic that I am very interested in is sexuality. Especially because people, especially, women are very shunned in society to express and talk about their own sexuality. Modern women artists who speak on sexuality are Ghada Amer, Wangechi Mutu, Sophia Narrett, Tschabalala Self, and Frida Khalo. All of their art is an expression of sexuality and reclaiming their bodies and gender.
     To begin, we will start with Ghada Amer, an artist that I have been following recently. She is an Egyptian contemporary artist who is known for her embroideries. However, she also focuses on paintings, sculptures, illustrations, garden projects, installations, and much more. Her usage of multimedia allows her to cover many social issues ("Ghada Amer: Love Has No End"). She uses it to empower female sexuality and gender, the gender roles that women are pushed to follow, and her antiwar ideologies. I believe that Amer is a very great artist and knows how to reel an audience. I will be discussing one of her pieces, a part of the erotic embroideries that she is famously known for. Her piece, You Are a Lady made in 2015 (which is below), caught my eye especially because of the lovely colors and the body that she made with the embroidery. Amer addresses the fantasy men have about women in most of her pieces, including this one. In this piece, there is a woman pleasuring herself, however, it is the male gaze in which women are confined in (Lorch). She is reclaiming the standards that men have pushed upon women. In an interview by Elephant, Amer states that all of the women she creates are white, and most of the time blonde (Lorch). She is encompassing the mainstream porn that people are so certainly used to and that women are oppressed with. The usage of embroidery comes back to her wanting to show how much women are oppressed. The long verticle strings remind me of jail cells, showing how women are suppressed to show their sexuality and the standards that follow including race and domesticity. 

Ghada Amer, You Are a Lady, 201

     The next artist that I am interested in is Wangechi Mutu. Wangechi Mutu is a contemporary Kenyan artist who also uses multimedia for her artwork, including collages, sculptures, performances, paintings, and much more. The wide variety of topics she focuses on are gender, war, violence, colonialism, and much more ("Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey"). She frequently creates her art on the hypersexuality of black women and the sexual repression of women. However, the artwork on female sexuality that she focuses upon in many of her collages is what we will be focusing on. In Adult Female Sexual Organs, made in 2005, Wangechi also calls out the beauty standards of women (Saatchi Gallery). In the piece, there is ahead of a woman, a black woman. However, there are only pieces of her face that are recognizable, the rest of the head and face are made of duct tape. And in the middle, it is the stereotypical white woman clipped in, the beauty standards that women are pushed to follow all around the world. 

Wangechi Mutu, Adult Female Sexual Organs, 2005

     The next artist that caught my eye is Sophia Narrett. She is another artist that does embroidery and focuses very heavily on female sexuality, desire, and fantasy. The way Narrett forms the figures in her art pieces makes me of impressionist paintings ("Sophia Narrett"). A lot of the pieces are whimsical and satirical. An art piece I would like to focus on is Do You Love Me? made in 2019. In the piece, there are multiple women, having sex with each other all over the place. There are women and men having sex, however, it is for the sexual fulfillment for the women rather than themselves, which is not regularly seen. Women are taught to cater to men and their sexual desire, but, Narrett is going against that and wishes to show the sexual desires of women instead. The piece is very whimsical to me with bunnies up in the air, a large heart, and a man petting a cow. This makes it clear that this is indeed a fantasy.

Sophia Narrett, Do You Love Me?, 2019

     The next woman artist I have come to appreciate is Tschabalala Self. Self is an African-American woman who grew up in Harlem, New York (Rees). She frequently uses acrylic paint as for her art and battles the over-sexualization of black women although their body is also being shamed in society ("Tschabalala Self"). You can see in the piece below, Sapphire, 2015, that the character’s (as she calls them) assets are being exaggerated just like in everyday society. However, Self gives these characters confidence and have total control of their bodies and freedom. In her piece self is able to critic the stereotypes imposed on black women but does not give her character’s vulnerability.

Tschabalala Self, Sapphire, 2015

     The last and final artist is Frida Khalo. Khalo is the most artist on this list and it is for great reasons. The Mexican artist is known for her paintings and the political and feminist stances that she portrays with them (Chadwick). They cover common themes of identity, the body, and death. She has also never been shy to display her views on sexuality, including. She was openly bisexual and embraced it in her painting: Two Nudes in the Forest, 1993. There are two nude women in the painting, one light, and one dark skin, in a forest with a monkey. They seem very affectionate towards each other since one is laying their head on the other. Khalo actually gave this to her girlfriend, Dolores del Rio ("Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939 by Frida Kahlo"). The LGBT+ community has always been oppressed for their sexualities and still are, but even in her time, Khalo painted in what she believed and what she wanted to. She was not scared to embrace her sexuality.

Frida Khalo, Two Nudes in the Forest, 1993

     All of these artists have something to offer. They all promote the expression of female sexuality, which is looked down upon so much. Women are supposed to not talk about their bodies on their own terms, not pleasure themselves, and not say what they want and are. Men have always had the upper hand and are allowed to speak on who they have been with and gain confidence from their sexual “conquests”. Ghada Amer, Wangechi Mutu, Sophia Narrett, Tschabalala Self, and Frida Kahlo are all women artists that help fight these norms to help others appreciate their sexuality on their own terms.

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Thames Hudson Ltd, 2020.

“Ghada Amer: Love Has No End.” Brooklyn Museum,                                                     

     www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/ghada_amer.
Lorch, Danna. “Ghada Amer on Embroidery and Default Beauty.” Elephant, 23 Mar. 2018,
     elephant.art/ghada-amer-embroidery-default-beauty/.
Saatchi Gallery. “Wangechi Mutu.” Wangechi Mutu - Adult Female Sexual Organs- Contemporary           Art, www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/wangechi_mutu_adult_female.htm.

“Sophia Narrett.” Galerie, 30 Sept. 2019, www.galeriemagazine.com/emergingartist/sophia-narrett/.
Rees, Lucy. “Meet Fast-Rising Artist Tschabalala Self.” Galerie, 12 June 2019,
     www.galeriemagazine.com/meet-fast-rising-artist-tschabalala-self/.
“Tschabalala Self.” Parasol Unit, parasol-unit.org/whats-on/tschabalala-self/.
“Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939 by Frida Kahlo.” Frida Khalo, 

     www.fridakahlo.org/two-nudes-in-the-forest.jsp.
“Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey.” Brooklyn Museum,
     www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/wangechi_mutu/.