In 2018 the Dutch daily Het Parool ran an article about Airco Caravan with the header: Art as a weapon in a non-violent struggle. This adequately sums up the way this conceptual artist, painter and activist sees art: as a weapon. It’s a benign weapon that does not sow death and destruction, but raises awareness and makes a case for equality instead. You may know her from the Dutch "Nasty Women" movement, for which she organized two major group exhibitions to raise funds for women's rights organizations; or from the publicity surrounding the bronze statue of Martin Luther King she placed on his birthday – January 15 1929– in the Amsterdam city park bearing his name, without prior permission of the municipality. It is therefore not surprising she curated a collection around the theme female artists with a message.
Airco is driven by idealism and through her art and projects she wants to raise awareness of social problems in her own provocative way. To this end, she conducts thorough research into the meaning and role of female artists in the media, in galleries and museums and thus also on Galleryviewer. Airco: "The distribution of male and female artists on GalleryViewer could be better. Currently, one third of the artists are women while two third are men. And that's a shame because in reality the ratio is fifty-fifty (source: Boekmanstichting, AC). So, we have to get at it in the Netherlands and make up for this lag. I also note that, in terms of prices GalleryViewer follows the international trend, that is, of works above € 50,000, only 20% are by female artists. Also, at auctions the prices of artworks by female artists are much lower than those made by their male colleagues. The most expensive work by a female artist ever auctioned is $ 44,000,000 and concerns the work, Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1, by Georgia O’Keeffe. That is a considerably lower amount than what is being paid for masterpieces by the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci and Willem De Kooning, which change ownership for hundreds of millions. Institutional sexism is so deeply ingrained in society, it will be a few generations before the lag of women in the art world, including the appreciation of their work and its pricing, has completely leveled out.