Can't Lock Me Up: Women Resist Silence

CAN’T LOCK ME UP

WOMEN RESIST SILENCE

Turner Carroll Gallery 725 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 505.986.9800 turnercarrollgallery.com info@turnercarrollgallery.com Essay: Tonya Turner Carroll Design: Shastyn Blomquist Photography: courtesy of the artists, unless otherwise noted Front Cover: Judy Chicago Return of the Butterfly four-color lithograph on cotton paper 26.25 x 25.75 in.

Inside Front Cover: Monica Lundy 11791-A gouache on Fabriano paper 22 x 30 in.

Back Cover: Lien Truong Facing East oil, antique 24k gold-leaf silk obi thread on arches oil paper 30 x 22 in.

CAN’T LOCK ME UP: WOMEN RESIST SILENCE “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful. We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.” Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan A massive, global problem exists in our shared human history. Since the beginning of civilization, women’s biology has been used against them in attempts to silence them, shame them, and to limit their access to education and power by locking them up literally or metaphorically. Perhaps born from fear of the sheer power women inherently possess in their ability to create new life, society has weaponzied the female body through language, images, and the threat of sexual violence. It’s time to admit this problem exists, examine how society perpetuates it, and do everything in our power to solve it.

Part of the problem is the pejorative language we use to describe aspects of female biology--from menstruation to menopausal hormonal, appearance, and emotional shifts. Historically, women who are bleeding are labeled as dirty, cursed, and forced to endure “ritual sequestration”—a euphemism for ostracization of women from society during menstruation. In Nepal, women are forced into menstrual huts where they sometimes die. UNICEF, the U.N. child advocacy agency, reports that in Zambia, school attendance becomes less consistent after fifth grade because most girls lack access to feminine hygiene supplies. This keeps women from receiving the education that would help them enrich not only their personal lives, but their entire societies.

Universally, women are called “hags” and “witches” as their aging skin sags and their worth as objects of beauty is diminished. From the second millenium B.C. in Egypt, women were deemed “hysterical” when they displayed emotional behavior connected with monthly hormonal shifts. The Greek physician Hippocrates believed women became “hysterical” when their uterus (hysteron) was not sexually satisfied, and that the only cure for female hysteria was sex. If a woman rejected sex to “cure” her hysteria, the explanation was that she was “possessed” by a “demonic” type of mental illness, for which one cure was fire, as in the later practice of burning a witch at the stake. The Latin word for woman, foemina, is formed from fe and minus, that is she “who has less faith.” As Phyllis Chesler points out in her book, Women and Madness, it comes as no surprise that due to these associations of insanity and deviance with female hormones, many patients in early mental institutions were menopausal women. Artist Monica Lundy paints images of female inmates of a Roman mental institution, using coffee, charcoal, and burned paper.

She explores this trend of locking women up and silencing them by labeling them “crazy” for behavior such as “flirtation” and “disobedience.”

Another part of the problem is the way images have been used throughout history to reinforce these pejorative stereotypes of women. Female nudes in museums rarely look the viewer in the eye, but are depicted with a diverted, subjugated gaze instead. When female public figures express their legitimate outrage, they are quickly discredited using photographic images depicting them as hysterical or irrational.

It’s as if when a woman uses her power and her voice, she is seen as the embodiment of Lilith herself.

Conversely, when men express anger, aggression, pain, or sadness in images, they might be thought of as powerful, passionate, assertive, professional, or sensitive. Thus, the way we have historically used images discredits women even before they speak, shunning them into silence and perpetuating belief in their inferiority.

Perhaps our biggest societal problem is how women have been historically subjugated through sexual violence. Sexual violence is a gender-based hate crime; the UN describes it as “a problem of pandemic proportions. Statistically, at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise physically or emotionally abused in her lifetime.” Forms of such sexual abuse include female infanticide, forced prostitution, genital mutilation, forced abortion, honor killings, dowry violence, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, marital rape, stoning, flogging, sexual trafficking, forced marriage, denial of medical care, and sexual slavery. These crimes hurt women psychologically, sexually, and physically and leave them feeling broken, fearful for their safety, and in pain.

Though 189 countries ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in the 1980s, horrific crimes against women persist. Soraya Manutchehri was buried to her waist then brutally stoned to death in Iran for “being an inconvenient wife.” Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for speaking out for girls’ right to attend school. More than 400 Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted from their school and forced to marry their captor-assaulters. 7000 Yazidi women and girls have been repeatedly sold as sex slaves in ISIS-controlled Syrian markets, and over half of them are still enslaved. Myanmar’s troops systematically raped Muslim Rohingya women to spread terror and force them to flee the country. Rwandan military raped virtually every surviving Tutsi female over the age of 12 in the Rwandan genocide. Femicide is still prevalent in China; according to a current UN report, femicide is often conducted in “the most cruel means” such as stabbing, beating and strangling, which, it said, reflects misogyny. “This means there has not been success in changing the cultural patterns that devalue women and consider them disposable, allowing for a social permissiveness in the face of violence and its ultimate expression, femicide,” the report said. Artist Hung Liu has devoted her entire artistic career to preserving the memory of these otherwise forgotten, nameless women forced into sexual submission.

Why do women remain silent about these human rights tragedies they endure? How could it be that women could have helped elect someone so threatening to their safety and dignity? Equally confounding: why would an undeniably accomplished, confident, qualified first woman presidential candidate stay silent while a man far less formidable than herself invaded her debate space? Why was she pushed to publish her chocolate chip cookie recipe to gain public trust? It is because we accept social norms demanding women act with such courteous and deferential self-control. Conversely, from a young age, boys’ rowdiness is tolerated, while girls are rewarded with praise and good grades for their silence and social composure.

What can we do to solve this problem of subverting and silencing women? We can take every opportunity to speak out about the ways women have been enslaved mentally, metaphorically, and physically throughout the world. Rather than just describing the atrocities against them, we can demand action on their behalf, and we can take action ourselves, no matter how small. We can call out societal degradation, discrediting, and sexual domination of women when we perceive it.

Turner Carroll Gallery is proud to exhibit women artists from throughout the world who speak the truth for themselves and their sisters who might have a harder time finding their voice. Artists like Fatemeh Baigmoradi, whose photographs with controversial members burned out of them help us remember a tragic history. Artists like Hung Liu, who has dedicated her life to painting disenfranchised women as quasi-imperial, transforming their pain into beauty, telling their stories with a grace they did not experience in their lifetimes. Artists like Lien Truong, who uses traditionally feminine media such as painted silk, 24-karat gold thread, and embroidery to tackle international issues of domination and resistance in her paintings. Artists like Judy Chicago and Jenny Holzer, who had to be loud and brash with their words and images when they started expressing these sentiments even before feminist art was defined. Artists like sheri crider, whose art expresses transformation of incarcerated women, and Monica Lundy, whose paintings tell the stories of women placed in mental institutions simply for not being silent.

It is our responsibility as human beings to speak up and act out on behalf of women. In the words of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Yazidi former ISIS sex slave Nadia Murad, ”If we do not want to repeat cases of rape and crimes against women, we must hold to account those who have used sexual violence as a weapon to commit crimes. I do not seek sympathy, I seek action.”

Tonya Turner Carroll

2

FATEMEH BAIGMORADI Growing up in Iran, Fatemeh Baigmoradi’s past was erased when her family destroyed their photos from the days her father was involved with the Shah’s government, lest they be used by the Ayatollah’s newly restrictive government as evidence against them. Fatemeh recreates history by reprinting photographs from that transitional era, to show how Iranian life and especially women’s lives changed dramatically.

She burns people and sections from each photograph to show the societal destruction that has occurred.

Fatemeh’s award winning “It’s Hard to Kill” series insists “It’s hard to kill history. The beliefs and thoughts of other people, no matter how obscured, can never be erased.” Fatemeh received her BFA from the University of Tehran and won first place Director’s Choice Award at Review Santa Fe, and her works have been shown in museums in Iran and the U.S., as well as in exhibitions in New York, France, and China.

Fatemeh Baigmoradi It’s Hard to Kill (a) mixed media (chemical photo print) 5.75 x 8.25 in.

3

Fatemeh Baigmoradi It’s Hard to Kill (c) mixed media (chemical photo print) 7 x 3. 5 in.

4

Fatemeh Baigmoradi It’s Hard to Kill (d) mixed media (chemical photo print) 5.5 x 7.5 in.

AMBREEN BUTT Ambreen Butt is a Lahore, Pakistan-born artist who now resides in the U.S. Her solo exhibition Mark My Words is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. through April 14, 2019. Ambreen’s Say My Name series will be shown simultaneously in the Turner Carroll exhibition and in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Trained in traditional miniature painting, she inserted herself into contemporary art history by making all protagonists in her paintings female, tackling controversial global issues such as oppression, violence, and politics. Ambreen’s works have been exhibited internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Boston Institute of Contemporary Art; Dallas Contemporary; the Sunshine Museum in Beijing, China; the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassell, Germany; the National Art Gallery in Islamabad, Pakistan; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Ambreen Butt Say My Name lithograph 36.5 x 24.5 in ea., diptych 5

Ambreen Butt Dirty Pretty 2 chine collĂŠ etching, silkscreen and lithograph on Somerset paper 15.75 x 14 in 6

Ambreen Butt Dirty Pretty 3 chine collĂŠ etching, silkscreen and lithograph on Somerset paper 17.25 x 14.75 in Ambreen Butt Dirty Pretty 1 chine collĂŠ etching, silkscreen and lithograph on Somerset paper 17.25 x 14.25 in 7

JUDY CHICAGO Judy Chicago is a pioneer of Feminist art, a movement that endeavors to reflect women's lives, call attention to women's roles as artists, and alter the conditions under which contemporary art is produced and received. Chicago’s work is the centerpiece of the Sackler Gallery of Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, as well as many other major museums throughout the world.

Judy Chicago Marie Antionette 1993/2017 four-color lithograph on cotton 26.25 x 25.75 in.

AP2, ed. 20 8

Judy Chicago Peeling Back offset lithograph on a rag paper 28.75 x 22 in. ed. 85/95 9

Judy Chicago Nine Fragments from the Delta of Venus nine color etching and aquatint print portfolio 17.75 x 17.75 x 1.5 in.

10

sheri crider New Mexico artist sheri crider’s works from her Flight series were created in response to mass incarcerations in the United States. Flight is a multi-media installation that examines connections between empathy, personal transformation, mass incarceration, and migration. crider employs migratory birds as visual metaphor for this deeply personal subject; she was formerly incarcerated herself and seeks to create social engagement about incarceration with the larger community. crider’s Flight works were partially sponsored by the Right of Return Fellowship which invests in formerly incarcerated artists to create original works that can further criminal justice reform in partnership with advocates and organizers.

sheri crider Rock, paper, scissors. Race, gender, class. bronze 13 x 6.5 x 9 in.

11

sheri crider Most everyone who ever believed in the best of me 11-bird mixed media installation each bird approx 10 x 14 x 6� in.

12

sheri crider Cibola Detention Center, Five years, $150mil, Silence still equals death gouache and enamel on paper 30 x 45 in.

13

HUNG LIU Named “One of the most influential artists of the last 100 years” by Smithsonian Curator Dorothy Moss, Hung Liu grew up in Communist China under Mao and was forced to work in wheat fields during the Cultural Revolution. Hung Liu now draws on her personal history to give voice to the disenfranchised.

Her work was included in the Art and China after 1989 exhibition, organized by the Guggenheim, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and her solo retrospective opens in 2021 at the National Portrait Gallery. Liu’s works are included in more than 40 museums throughout the world, including The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Walker Art Center; The National Gallery of Art; The Asian Art Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum; The Smithsonian American Art Museum; National Museum of Women in the Arts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and The Long Museum in Shanghai, China.

Hung Liu Dandelion 13 oil on canvas 48 x 96 in.

14

Hung Liu Nanking I oil on canvas 12.75 x 17 in.

Hung Liu Nanking II oil on canvas 12.75 x 17 in.

15

Hung Liu Pre-Dawn oil on canvas 66 x 66 in.

16

Hung Liu Imperial Garden Study II mixed media on panel 25.25 x 41 in.

17

Hung LIu Mu Gung Hwa (Korean Comfort Woman) oil on canvas 48 x 54 in.

18

MONICA LUNDY Italian-American artist Monica Lundy gives voice to the misunderstood and disenfranchised in society.

Her upbringing in Saudi Arabia makes her keenly aware of the inequities women face. Lundy’s works depict women who have been imprisioned or locked up in mental institutions for “offenses” such as being “disobedient,” “promiscuous,” “too loud,” or otherwise “deviant.” Hung Liu was Lundy’s artistic mentor and teacher.

Monica Lundy Fausta charcoal, coffee, burned paper, gouache on Khadi paper 33.75 x 33.75 in.

19

Monica Lundy 29938 gouache on Fabriano paper 30 x 22 in.

Monica Lundy 3600 gouache on Fabriano paper 30 x 22 in.

20

Monica Lundy Elena charcoal, coffee, burned paper, gouache on Khadi paper 27.5 x 27.5 in.

Monica Lundy 31298 gouache on Fabriano paper 30 x 22 in.

Monica Lundy 13793 gouache on Fabriano paper 30 x 22 in.

22

JENNY HOLZER Holzer is well-known for her Truisms: provocative mass-produced statements she made accessible by printing them on posters, t-shirts, baseball caps, and postcards. By did not including imagery as part of her artwork, the message itself becomes the art. Holzer’s Truisms included in the Turner Carroll exhibition are also included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and were exhibited at the London Institute of Contemporary Art in curator, and New Mexico resident, Lucy Lippard’s Social Strategies by Women Artists.

Holzer’s works are included in prominent private and museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Tate Collection, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She was awarded the Leone d’Oro for her work at the Venice Biennale, as well as the Berlin Prize and numerous honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts.

Jenny Holzer Truism Series mixed media on wood 4 x 6 in. ea.

23

LIEN TRUONG Lien Truong’s paintings examine social, cultural, and political history, exploring influences that form contemporary identity and belief systems in a transcultural context. She employs a rich pastiche of styles and media as she explores the cultural dynamics of domination, assimilation, and resistance throughout history. Embedded histories of exclusion or assimilation, Truong utilizes traditionally feminine practices such as embroidery and silk painting in her works as a contrast to the often harsh socio-political themes she depicts.

Truong’s work has been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX; the Centres of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Yekaterinburg; Oakland Museum of California; and she is the recipient of many awards and fellowships. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Truong immigrated to the US in 1975. She received her MFA from Mills College, Oakland, CA, where she studied under feminist artist Hung Liu.

Lien Truong char-truce oil, silk, acrylic, antique 24k gold-leaf silk obi thread, silk obi thread on canvas 30 x 30 in.

Lien Truong A Brief Mention of Sanctuary in America oil, linen, acrylic, silk, fabric paint, antique 24k gold-leaf silk obi thread, black salt on arches oil paper 72 x 51 in.

turnercarrollgallery.com | 725 Canyon Road | Santa Fe, NM 87501 | 505.986.9800