mulier mulieris
Amparo Navarro Faure
President of the University of Alicante
The mulier, mulieris Biennial Visual Arts Contest is an initiative launched by the University of Alicante, always committed to giving visibility to women’s achievements and raising awareness of the need to work together if we are to achieve gender equality and non-discrimination. It is in this spirit that the University of Alicante Museum has run the 14th edition of the contest, which serves as a platform for a rich artistic debate in which feminism is understood as a tool for social change. The 16 entries selected for exhibition have been created by 18 artists (14 women, 4 men) who come from different places and adopt a variety of technical and conceptual approaches. Through their paintings, photographs, posters, collages, videos or sculptures, we become aware of complex and diverse situations affecting women. The works on display look at the concerns, challenges and aspirations of every free, fair and equal society. The selection jury included one of the pioneers of feminist pop art in the Valencia Region: Isabel Oliver, PhD in Fine Arts and Professor of Drawing at the Universitat Politècnica de València. Her more than 40 years of experience and her tireless advocacy of the feminist cause have resulted in a selection of works characterised by their high quality and diversity, in terms of themes and artistic forms. A look at the issues explored in these works, undertaken between 2018 and 2021, leaves no doubt as to the artists’ unwavering ethical and aesthetic commitment. Several projects build on the legacy of women, laying bare how their role in contexts like artistic creation, war, domestic work or the public sphere has been deliberately ignored. Other pieces delve into multiple forms of violence (verbal, economic, physical, sexual) women can be subject to. Motherhood is analysed from different angles: women who wish to become mothers but are unable to, women who choose not to have children, or the controversial issue of surrogacy. Finally, some works focus on consent, aesthetic or religious impositions, sexist stereotypes or the identification of women with nature, rounding out a unique exhibition where we will discover new ways of looking at and understanding the reality around us. One more year, on the occasion of an exhibition showcasing the artists’ compassionate, attentive and knowing gaze, I encourage you to share your reflections and take this chance to engage in thought and transformative action.
14th mulier, mulieris Biennial Visual Arts Contest
Isabel Oliver
Artist. Professor of drawing. Polytechnic university of Valencia
One more year, this compelling initiative brings together a number of artists who reflect on women and their visibility in the social fabric through a wide variety of artistic forms. After 14 editions of the mulier, mulieris Biennial, the University of Alicante has demonstrated to be a pioneering institution in its commitment to women’s rights. We often forget that art, which cannot be dissociated from the social fabric it emerges from, constitutes a community of men and women. As pointed out by Rocío de la Villa: “The exponential growth of the number of women having joined Spain’s art system in recent decades has led us to examine, from a critical and political perspective, the situation of women in various professional sectors.”1 It is interesting to determine the extent to which the advance of feminism, which has been particularly remarkable over the last few years (one just needs to look at the #MeToo movement or the International Women’s Day marches that have taken place all over the world), has resulted in increased equality between women and men in art and other fields. According to the 1978 Spanish Constitution (Part I. “Fundamental rights and duties”. Chapter three. “Governing Principles of Economic and Social Policy”. Article 44), “The public authorities shall promote and watch over access to cultural opportunities, to which all are entitled”. Therefore, this new mulier, mulieris edition at the University of Alicante is fully in line with the obligation for public institutions to guarantee, without excluding anyone, the right to cultural creation and cultural training. In this case, the aim of the mulier, mulieris contest is clear: to encourage reflection on, and serve as a platform for artists concerned with, women’s visibility in art and culture, which remains a crucial issue in feminist studies. This year’s contest is the latest addition to a list of initiatives with a similar purpose, the first of which was, in Spain, the ground-breaking exhibition Territorios indefinidos. Discursos sobre la construcción de la identidad femenina2 [‘Indefinite territories. Discourses on the construction of female identity’], staged in 1995.
1 Rocío de la Villa. Mujeres en el sistema del arte en España. Ed. MAV. 2012. p. 9 2 Isabel Tejeda, curator of this exhibition, is a researcher and pioneer of feminist studies.
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