With ‘Heroines Now’, AKINCI launches this year the second edition of a thematic exhibition. The first
show was in 2005 and involved ‘Heroines’, groundbreaking women artists of the 60ies and 70ies as Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann and Valie Export. Again, a feminine approach to the world’s needs and visionary concepts are relevant. In ‘Heroines Now’, AKINCI will present works by Melanie Bonajo (The Netherlands), Anne Wenzel (Germany), Gluklya (Russia/Netherlands), Sarah Naqvi (India) and Lungiswa Gqunta (South Africa). ‘Heroines Now’ will reveal how vivid and urgent topics seen from the point of view of women artists from different continents and countries are now, with new insight, different visual tools, with humour and seriousness.
What is the face of feminism today? How does it relate to the feminism of the sixties and seventies? Some say feminism is more individual in the new millennium, it is intersectional, less on the street; it manifests itself more on social media. With the #MeToo movement and intersectional* feminism, it is clear that the
discussion has flared up again. This exhibition is not so much on feminist issues, it rather responds immediately to the call brought forward by the feminist movement; a call for strong female voices. Through their art, these women offer a worldview, an opinion on a way to be in the world that is implicitly or explicitly present in the feminist discussion.
* Intersectionality is a term asserting how all aspects of social and political identities
(gender, ethnic background, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) discrimination overlap (or ‘intersect’)