The Womanifesto Online Anthology Clare Veal, Marni Williams, Roger Nelson and Yvonne Low Since 2017, the Gender in Southeast Asian Art Histories research network has organised symposia and publications focused on intersections between feminisms and art histories of the region. In 2019, we organised a number of events around the evaluation of women’s labour and ephemerality in art practices, which led to exhibitions of the Womanifesto archive in Bangkok and Sydney. Womanifesto is a women’s art collective with a significant but understudied legacy of artistic, exhibition and residency projects that engage culturally and otherwise diverse participants. Womanifesto began in 1995 with the artist-led feminist exhibition ‘Tradisexion’, staged at the alternative art space Concrete House in Bangkok. The goal of increasing women artists’ visibility continued as a series of exhibitions staged biannually in various locations in Thailand, with later iterations moving to online platforms.
Roundtable at the opening of ‘Archiving Womanifesto’ with Varsha Nair via Zoom, 2019, The Cross Art Projects, Sydney, Australia. Image courtesy of Yvonne Low.
One of the reasons Womanifesto emerged as a site of scholarly attention is because its position as a formative transnational feminist network has yet to be fully apprehended within art histories of the region. Yet from our engagements with some of the founding members of Womanifesto — the artists Varsha Nair, Phaptawan Suwannakudt and Nitaya Ueareeworakul — the history and ongoing ethos of Womanifesto is undoubtedly one that speaks to and illuminates the many creative ways women have overcome gender-based challenges to achieve self-determination. While studying the histories and networks of
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