Photo © Gloria Oyarzabal
Creative - NOMINEE: Gloria Oyarzabal
WOMAN GO NO'GREE
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During European colonialism gender categories were institutionalized in Yoruba and other African cultures as one kind of bio-logic "new tradition”. Can we assume social relations in all societies are organized around biological sexual difference? Beauty canon, modernity, stereotypes… Decolonize feminism questioning the Eurocentric rational theoretical frameworks that construct gender categories in a universalistic manner.
This research is inspired by different readings of African feminist literature. One of them is Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí’s “The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses” where, among other questions, she traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of Western feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. There is significant religious and linguistic evidence that Yoruba society was not gendered in its original form: before colonization social practices (such as division of labour, kinship, profession and monarchical structures) were not ordered according to gender difference but to lineage or age. So, before English colonial years empowerment in Yoruba society wasn’t linked to gender.
Another inspirational books has been Ifi Adiume’s “Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society “ where she challenges the received orthodoxies of social anthropology, arguing that in precolonial society, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide. Examining the structures that enabled women to achieve power, she shows that roles were neither rigidly masculinized nor feminized. Economic changes in colonial times undermined women’s status and reduced their political role, so she maintains, patriarchal tendencies introduced by colonialism persist today, to the detriment of women. Critical of the chauvinist stereotypes established by colonial anthropology, the author stresses the importance of recognizing women’s economic activities as as essential basis of their power, being also critical of those western feminists who, when relating to African women, tend to accept the same outmoded projections.
Empires, by their very nature, embody and institutionalize difference, both between metropolis and colony and between colonial subjects. Imperial imaginary floods popular culture. Rethink gender as a sociocultural Western construction: postcolonial mapping of the distinctively European approaches to feminism that developed the "woman question” mostly as a Western one and not with a proper lens for viewing African society.
Where is the African women identity leading to? Thus, the three central concepts that have been Western feminisms pillars -women, gender and sisterhood- are only understand with a careful attention to the nuclear family from which they have emerged; concepts that arise from the logic of the patriarchal nuclear family which is a familiar form far from being universal. . Infantilization of women as part of Western patriarchal system was also exported with the colonization of the mind, configuring a state of vulnerability and making the path of dependency propitious. Can we assume that social relations in all societies are organized around biological sexual difference? Is the male body in African societies seen as normative and therefore a channel for the exercise of power?
How do new realities affect new understandings of kinship, marriage and family as a result of status class, sexuality, geography? Erotic, sisterhood, motherhood, marriage, tradition, domestication…all this aspects, nuances, with it’s own lights and shades in each society, should come out in the same level in order to compare. Beauty circulates as a form of commodity with social, economic and cultural value. However these norms are often measured with Eurocentric values, white beauty narratives and ideals of beauty (thinness, youth,..) being strongly racialized. Whiteness is reinforced at the same time as the norm, while "otherness" becomes fetish and something "exotic”. Will Western feminism be able to grow and evolve by observing and taking into account other community movements without a look of superiority and privilege as has happened up to now?
One consequence of Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans, therefore, as thinkers. In addition, male privilege as an essential part of the European ethos is implicit in the culture of modernity. What if modernity models bring us to a new vision of "the other"? Stereotypes, clichés.....
Basically the two main intentions of this project are to point out the colonization of the concept of women through Victorian education, monotheists religions and canons of beauty; and the importance of the non-universalisation of feminism.Let us wish for new ways of relating genders, of new models of intercultural dialogues not based on supremacy nor on an excluding hierarchy, and maybe identities, both individual and community, could naturally develop towards a society which one wouldn't have to be invisible in order to advance.
About author:
(London, UK 1971)
I'm an spanish artist photographer, based in Madrid but moving around whenever I can, mostly in Africa.
I co-founded and programmed at the independent cinema “La Enana Marrón” in Madrid (1999-2009), dedicated to the diffusion of author, experimental and alternative cinema. Since 1996 I'm working at my studio and in the cinema world taking care of artistic direction and photography of experimental short films & documentaries.
Lived in Bamako, Mali (2009-12) with my partner and kids.While shooting an experimental documentary film, I took advantage of being in the center of my interests and focused on a research on the maquiavelican construction of the Idea of Africa, the different processes of colonization/decolonization, new tactics of neo colonialism and how the colonization of the mind led to a wrongly universalization of Western feminism stablishing a patriarchal model of sciety that had nothing to do of how African societies managed gender issues, leading me to discover the different branches of African Feminisms.
I graduated on Conservation & Restoration of Art (1993), have a bachelor of Fine Arts at Complutense University at Madrid (1998), have been teacher of Analysis of Architectural Forms at IADE(2001-2010) and finished a Master in Creation & Development of Photographic Projects at Blankpaper School of Photography (Madrid 2014-2015).Now I'm into a course specialization on antropology for artist.
My work has been shown at Lagos Photo(Nig),Organ Vida(Cr),FORMAT(Derby,UK),Kaunas Foto(Lith),Athens Photo(Gr), PHE Photo España(Sp),Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Gr),Odessa Photo Days (Ukr),Bitume Festival Lecce(It),Encontros da Imagem(Pt),ArtPhotoBCN, ...among others.
In 2017 I was selected for the artist residence Ranchito Matadero Nigeria-Southafrica allowing me to develop my project between Madrid and Lagos (Nig) at the Art House Foundation.
After winning the Vevey Images Photobook Award I will publish my second photobook about the colonization of the mind and the concept of "woman" , and how eurocentric feminism shouldn't universilize their discurss in order to listen to other voices.
PRIZES:
2019 VEVEY IMAGES Dummy Award (Switzerland)
PHmuseum 2nd Nonorable Mention
GRAND PRIX FOTOFESTIWAL (Lodz, Poland)
2018 Grant for the production of Plastic Arts of the Community of Madrid
ENCONTROS DA IMAGEM DISCOVERY AWARD (Braga, Portugal)
BMM Award (Biennial Miradas de Mujer, organized by MAV (Women in the Visuals Arts)
Julia Cameron Award. Finalist
2017 LANDSKRONA PHOTO DUMMY AWARD
2016 Can Basté Prize (exhibition in Barcelona 2017)
2015 "Carta Blanca". EFTI, Madrid
Nexofoto X Iberoamerican Photography Contest.Finalist
FOTOPRESS LA CAIXA.Finalist
2014 Kuala Lumpur International Photo Award. FINALIST
2013 Honorable Mention 38th PWP Professional Women Photographers
2nd Prize 2013 International Women's Erotic Art Competition
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2019 “WOMAN GO NO’GREE” ArtPhotoBCN (Barcelona, Spain)
2018 "WOMAN GO NO'GREE". Intermediae Mirador Usera (Madrid)
2017 "ELMINA STRATEGY". PHE PHOTOESPAÑA Hacer . EL AGUILA (MADRID)
2016 "THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ". EFTI (MADRID)
2009 "FIVE NEEDS". FRAGIL(Madrid)
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS:
2019 “WOMAN GO NO’GREE” fotonoviembre (Tenerife, Spain)
“WOMAN GO NO’GREE” Encontros da Imagem (Braga,Portugal)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Fotofestiwal Lodz (Poland)
“WOMAN GO NO’GREE” Athens Foto (Greece)
"FEMINISMS AND FEMINITY" Le Mur Gallery (Madrid)
"FOREVER//NOW" FORMAT Festival ( Derby, UK)
2018 "BEAUTY & CONSOLATION" Encontros da Imagem (Braga, Portugal)
"Engaged, active,aware-woman's perspectives now" ORGAN VIDA (Zagreb, Croatia)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Kaunas Photo (Lithuania)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Voies Off (Arles, France)
"THE PICNOLEPSIA OF TSHOMBÉ Odessa Batumi Photo Days (Ukraine)
"THE PICNOLEPSIA OF TSHOMBÉ" REVELA-T Festival (Barcelona)
2017 "SUSANA AND THE OLD". RANCHITO NIGERIA SOUTH AFRICA. MATADERO (Madrid,Spain)
"STILL THE BARBARIANS. ATHENS PHOTOFESTIVAL.BENAKI MUSEUM, (Greece)
2016 "STILL THE BARBARIANS" URBAN LAYERS:(Upho Festival Malaga (SP),Photobiennale Thessaloniki(GR),Bitume Photofest Lecce(IT))
"PLEASURE IV" HABITAR LA INTIMIDAD.NIGREDO ESPACIO(Madrid)
"THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ" LATENT ROMA.MACRO MUSEUM (Rome)
PHOTOBOOK "THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ":
Encontros da Imagem Call for Books (Braga, Portugal), Finalist
SCAN Photobooks(Tarragona, ESP) Finalist
Unseen Dummy Award (Amsterdam) Finalist
Cosmos PDF Award #9(Arles, France)
Athens Photo Festival Dummy Award . Finalist
Kassel Dummy Award. Finalist
Docfield Barcelona Dummy Award. Mention of honour.
2015 "THE PICNOLESPY OF TSHOMBÉ" :
Lagos Photo Festival (Nigeria)
OpenStudio(Madrid)
Encontros da Imagem (Braga,Portugal)Finalist
La New fair (La New Gallery, Madrid)
2014 Instants Quotidians" TACCbcn(Barcelona).
Photo Espacio Oculto(Madrid)
"Streetstyle" Tate Britain (UK)
“Ahora,nosotras”("Now, We" ) Women's Gazes Festival.
"Franqueados" (Madrid)
2013 LAP/Public Art Award (Basilicata, Italy)
Celeste Prize (Florence, Italy)
2010 X Prize of Photography University of Murcia. Catalogue
2009 Biodiversity Foundation Awards.
XVI Biennial of Cerveira (Portugal). Work in catalogue.
2008 "The copy, the false (and the original)" Canal de Isabel II (Madrid)
Selected in www.2008culturas.com (Mº de Cultura)
"From Madrid to the ground." Espacio Menos Uno (Madrid)
2007 "Fernando Quiñones" Contest (Cádiz)
José García Jiménez Foundation Award for Artistic Creation (Murcia)
2006 Young Prize of Plastic Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid. Work in catalogue.
This research is inspired by different readings of African feminist literature. One of them is Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí’s “The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses” where, among other questions, she traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of Western feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. There is significant religious and linguistic evidence that Yoruba society was not gendered in its original form: before colonization social practices (such as division of labour, kinship, profession and monarchical structures) were not ordered according to gender difference but to lineage or age. So, before English colonial years empowerment in Yoruba society wasn’t linked to gender.
Another inspirational books has been Ifi Adiume’s “Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society “ where she challenges the received orthodoxies of social anthropology, arguing that in precolonial society, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide. Examining the structures that enabled women to achieve power, she shows that roles were neither rigidly masculinized nor feminized. Economic changes in colonial times undermined women’s status and reduced their political role, so she maintains, patriarchal tendencies introduced by colonialism persist today, to the detriment of women. Critical of the chauvinist stereotypes established by colonial anthropology, the author stresses the importance of recognizing women’s economic activities as as essential basis of their power, being also critical of those western feminists who, when relating to African women, tend to accept the same outmoded projections.
Empires, by their very nature, embody and institutionalize difference, both between metropolis and colony and between colonial subjects. Imperial imaginary floods popular culture. Rethink gender as a sociocultural Western construction: postcolonial mapping of the distinctively European approaches to feminism that developed the "woman question” mostly as a Western one and not with a proper lens for viewing African society.
Where is the African women identity leading to? Thus, the three central concepts that have been Western feminisms pillars -women, gender and sisterhood- are only understand with a careful attention to the nuclear family from which they have emerged; concepts that arise from the logic of the patriarchal nuclear family which is a familiar form far from being universal. . Infantilization of women as part of Western patriarchal system was also exported with the colonization of the mind, configuring a state of vulnerability and making the path of dependency propitious. Can we assume that social relations in all societies are organized around biological sexual difference? Is the male body in African societies seen as normative and therefore a channel for the exercise of power?
How do new realities affect new understandings of kinship, marriage and family as a result of status class, sexuality, geography? Erotic, sisterhood, motherhood, marriage, tradition, domestication…all this aspects, nuances, with it’s own lights and shades in each society, should come out in the same level in order to compare. Beauty circulates as a form of commodity with social, economic and cultural value. However these norms are often measured with Eurocentric values, white beauty narratives and ideals of beauty (thinness, youth,..) being strongly racialized. Whiteness is reinforced at the same time as the norm, while "otherness" becomes fetish and something "exotic”. Will Western feminism be able to grow and evolve by observing and taking into account other community movements without a look of superiority and privilege as has happened up to now?
One consequence of Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans, therefore, as thinkers. In addition, male privilege as an essential part of the European ethos is implicit in the culture of modernity. What if modernity models bring us to a new vision of "the other"? Stereotypes, clichés.....
Basically the two main intentions of this project are to point out the colonization of the concept of women through Victorian education, monotheists religions and canons of beauty; and the importance of the non-universalisation of feminism.Let us wish for new ways of relating genders, of new models of intercultural dialogues not based on supremacy nor on an excluding hierarchy, and maybe identities, both individual and community, could naturally develop towards a society which one wouldn't have to be invisible in order to advance.
About author:
(London, UK 1971)
I'm an spanish artist photographer, based in Madrid but moving around whenever I can, mostly in Africa.
I co-founded and programmed at the independent cinema “La Enana Marrón” in Madrid (1999-2009), dedicated to the diffusion of author, experimental and alternative cinema. Since 1996 I'm working at my studio and in the cinema world taking care of artistic direction and photography of experimental short films & documentaries.
Lived in Bamako, Mali (2009-12) with my partner and kids.While shooting an experimental documentary film, I took advantage of being in the center of my interests and focused on a research on the maquiavelican construction of the Idea of Africa, the different processes of colonization/decolonization, new tactics of neo colonialism and how the colonization of the mind led to a wrongly universalization of Western feminism stablishing a patriarchal model of sciety that had nothing to do of how African societies managed gender issues, leading me to discover the different branches of African Feminisms.
I graduated on Conservation & Restoration of Art (1993), have a bachelor of Fine Arts at Complutense University at Madrid (1998), have been teacher of Analysis of Architectural Forms at IADE(2001-2010) and finished a Master in Creation & Development of Photographic Projects at Blankpaper School of Photography (Madrid 2014-2015).Now I'm into a course specialization on antropology for artist.
My work has been shown at Lagos Photo(Nig),Organ Vida(Cr),FORMAT(Derby,UK),Kaunas Foto(Lith),Athens Photo(Gr), PHE Photo España(Sp),Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Gr),Odessa Photo Days (Ukr),Bitume Festival Lecce(It),Encontros da Imagem(Pt),ArtPhotoBCN, ...among others.
In 2017 I was selected for the artist residence Ranchito Matadero Nigeria-Southafrica allowing me to develop my project between Madrid and Lagos (Nig) at the Art House Foundation.
After winning the Vevey Images Photobook Award I will publish my second photobook about the colonization of the mind and the concept of "woman" , and how eurocentric feminism shouldn't universilize their discurss in order to listen to other voices.
PRIZES:
2019 VEVEY IMAGES Dummy Award (Switzerland)
PHmuseum 2nd Nonorable Mention
GRAND PRIX FOTOFESTIWAL (Lodz, Poland)
2018 Grant for the production of Plastic Arts of the Community of Madrid
ENCONTROS DA IMAGEM DISCOVERY AWARD (Braga, Portugal)
BMM Award (Biennial Miradas de Mujer, organized by MAV (Women in the Visuals Arts)
Julia Cameron Award. Finalist
2017 LANDSKRONA PHOTO DUMMY AWARD
2016 Can Basté Prize (exhibition in Barcelona 2017)
2015 "Carta Blanca". EFTI, Madrid
Nexofoto X Iberoamerican Photography Contest.Finalist
FOTOPRESS LA CAIXA.Finalist
2014 Kuala Lumpur International Photo Award. FINALIST
2013 Honorable Mention 38th PWP Professional Women Photographers
2nd Prize 2013 International Women's Erotic Art Competition
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2019 “WOMAN GO NO’GREE” ArtPhotoBCN (Barcelona, Spain)
2018 "WOMAN GO NO'GREE". Intermediae Mirador Usera (Madrid)
2017 "ELMINA STRATEGY". PHE PHOTOESPAÑA Hacer . EL AGUILA (MADRID)
2016 "THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ". EFTI (MADRID)
2009 "FIVE NEEDS". FRAGIL(Madrid)
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS:
2019 “WOMAN GO NO’GREE” fotonoviembre (Tenerife, Spain)
“WOMAN GO NO’GREE” Encontros da Imagem (Braga,Portugal)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Fotofestiwal Lodz (Poland)
“WOMAN GO NO’GREE” Athens Foto (Greece)
"FEMINISMS AND FEMINITY" Le Mur Gallery (Madrid)
"FOREVER//NOW" FORMAT Festival ( Derby, UK)
2018 "BEAUTY & CONSOLATION" Encontros da Imagem (Braga, Portugal)
"Engaged, active,aware-woman's perspectives now" ORGAN VIDA (Zagreb, Croatia)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Kaunas Photo (Lithuania)
"WOMAN GO NO'GREE" Voies Off (Arles, France)
"THE PICNOLEPSIA OF TSHOMBÉ Odessa Batumi Photo Days (Ukraine)
"THE PICNOLEPSIA OF TSHOMBÉ" REVELA-T Festival (Barcelona)
2017 "SUSANA AND THE OLD". RANCHITO NIGERIA SOUTH AFRICA. MATADERO (Madrid,Spain)
"STILL THE BARBARIANS. ATHENS PHOTOFESTIVAL.BENAKI MUSEUM, (Greece)
2016 "STILL THE BARBARIANS" URBAN LAYERS:(Upho Festival Malaga (SP),Photobiennale Thessaloniki(GR),Bitume Photofest Lecce(IT))
"PLEASURE IV" HABITAR LA INTIMIDAD.NIGREDO ESPACIO(Madrid)
"THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ" LATENT ROMA.MACRO MUSEUM (Rome)
PHOTOBOOK "THE PICNOLEPSY OF TSHOMBÉ":
Encontros da Imagem Call for Books (Braga, Portugal), Finalist
SCAN Photobooks(Tarragona, ESP) Finalist
Unseen Dummy Award (Amsterdam) Finalist
Cosmos PDF Award #9(Arles, France)
Athens Photo Festival Dummy Award . Finalist
Kassel Dummy Award. Finalist
Docfield Barcelona Dummy Award. Mention of honour.
2015 "THE PICNOLESPY OF TSHOMBÉ" :
Lagos Photo Festival (Nigeria)
OpenStudio(Madrid)
Encontros da Imagem (Braga,Portugal)Finalist
La New fair (La New Gallery, Madrid)
2014 Instants Quotidians" TACCbcn(Barcelona).
Photo Espacio Oculto(Madrid)
"Streetstyle" Tate Britain (UK)
“Ahora,nosotras”("Now, We" ) Women's Gazes Festival.
"Franqueados" (Madrid)
2013 LAP/Public Art Award (Basilicata, Italy)
Celeste Prize (Florence, Italy)
2010 X Prize of Photography University of Murcia. Catalogue
2009 Biodiversity Foundation Awards.
XVI Biennial of Cerveira (Portugal). Work in catalogue.
2008 "The copy, the false (and the original)" Canal de Isabel II (Madrid)
Selected in www.2008culturas.com (Mº de Cultura)
"From Madrid to the ground." Espacio Menos Uno (Madrid)
2007 "Fernando Quiñones" Contest (Cádiz)
José García Jiménez Foundation Award for Artistic Creation (Murcia)
2006 Young Prize of Plastic Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid. Work in catalogue.