Fighting their Fate

This exhibition seeks to examine the symbolic representations of women in the context of oppressive power mechanisms in the contemporary global age. These representations are often considered in contemporary feminist thought, which seeks to change fundamental structures in the relations between the sexes. This contemporary feminist approach is based on a radical critique arguing that the man/woman dichotomy legitimizes the socio-political disempowerment of women.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has argued that despite successful feminist activity, male hegemony remains in place, since men's dominance is based on the internalization, by all of society, of "masculine" categories of thinking and schemes of classification. This position assumes the anticipated surrender of women, which necessarily prevents their entry into political life. Even when such development does occur, it is often unwelcomed by the public.

This exhibition seeks to place a special emphasis on representations of women in Third World and former Second World countries. The works are based on the feminist critique of globalization. They share a call to develop a new perception of multinational feminist approaches in the anti-capitalist struggle.

The works in the exhibition challenge the media images that serve the hyper-capitalist, white political system in its attempt to establish its global sovereignty. Thus, for example, the Middle Eastern woman is mostly represented with as a veiled, voiceless, submissive and helpless victim. By contrast, the Western woman is presented as liberated. Sometimes she even takes positions of power in the militant order of global warfare (such as images of women in the U.S. Army and in the IDF). Thereby the media replicates the dichotomous conception, suffused with gender-based and racial violence, which distinguishes between women on both sides of national struggles. Visual media masks the patriarchal discourse and the simple fact that no change has occurred in the role of women in the age of global warfare: not only have women remained subjected to the same sovereign logic; they have now become its active agents.

The contemporary discourse addresses the covert assumption regarding the supremacy of European culture – an assumption that is preserved in the transnational age. The critical engagement with this issue is also prominent in the exhibited works by women artists from post-Communist countries. This discourse touches on the phenomenon of neo-racism, translated into various forms of discrimination, humiliation, and institutionalized violence towards the immigrants flowing into Europe. Part of this discourse addresses the immigrants' poverty and isolation and the European policy of exclusion – a reality that, for women, is particularly difficult and complex.

The works presented in the exhibition undermine the processes of exclusion directed against immigrant women and neutralizing their power and their political, cultural, and psychological influence. The artists often use humor as a means of coping and subverting entrenched cultural values and establishing the self as a hybrid subject. Their works show that women must develop unique strategies in order to form a positive conception of themselves, being weaker that the strong, Western subject. The reality of their status as "hybrids" is reflected in their works.

In the contemporary age of global migration the status of women declines, as freedom of choice is simultaneously granted and denied. In the global political dynamic, the law ensures the emergence of its denied companion: violence. In opposition to the West's defensive masculine-military idea, the contemporary feminist vision proposes a conception of "personal security," which includes freedom from deprivation, discrimination, and repression, and the cultivation of freedom of speech and social and personal bonds. To this end, the artists support rebellion as a strategy, based on a belief in their power to create a new political map and a new vision. In their works, woman, as both citizen and refugee, fights her fate.