V I O L E N T F E M M E S
June 2021
Violent Femmes Curatorial Statement:
Violent FemmesInterrogating the Femme Fatale archetype.
We are the Violent Femmes, not the Folk Punk band from the 1980’s Post Punk era (who ironically didn’t have any female members) but the collective femme fatale force of the post-truth pandemic era. The term Femme Fatale originates from the French meaning Fatal Female or Dangerous Woman. She emerges in art and literature as Judith, painted extensively by Artemisia Gentileschi, who felt an uncanny kinship with this muse. Julia Kristeva (2011) wrote in her book The Severed Head: Capital Visions, about the relationship between Gentileschi and Judith, painting them both as feminist heroines. The male dominated world conversely describes them as being simultaneously precarious, dangerous and trouble.
Conceivably dangerous times calls for dangerous women; Anna Tsing (2015:2) describes the precarity of our times in her wonderful book The Mushroom at the end of the World, saying: “It seems that all our lives are precarious—many of us […] confront the condition of trouble without end.” While theorist Donna Haraway (2016:1) describes the need for women to make kin as a way to flourish in a damaged and dangerous world: “The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present.”
The artists in this group exhibition does not necessarily engage with the Femme Fatale concept on a thematic level, it would be too literal to expect a group of diverse women to interpret such a topic solely on the content of concept and theme. We, the artists, are the embodiment of what it means to be female in this precarious time where making kin trumps fighting tooth and nail for our place in society. We have emerged from the fight fought by our 2nd and 3rd wave predecessors to a place where we must work together if we are to ensure a future for ourselves and those who will come after us. As diverse as this group of artists are, varied in media, concept, background and environment, we are informed by the same unifying thread: an ethic of care, which emerges from working alongside each other, to strengthen, encourage and support not only each other, but also the world around us.
How do we go about it? By telling and listening to each other’s stories: Whether the maternal stories told by Larissa, or the accounts of making kin in the urban areas as told by Ilse, Jo’s stories of connection on a molecular level, or my own making meaning of my tribe’s connection to the earth. As Shenaz relates her story rooted in cultural soil, which converses with Anina’s tale. Every single work in this space is conversing with each other, it is, to steal Donna Haraway’s phrase a “bumptious kind, of response” or rather a conversation between an “extraordinary collective of bumptious women.” Ours is not a story of reconciliation and standing together, we have always been connected, we have always been one, we are just now rediscovering the weaving of the fabric:
We are kin, learning to live and die well together in this moment, stirring up trouble as we grow alongside each other, restoring a broken world while building quiet places (Haraway 2016:1).
We are the Violent Femmes, not the Folk Punk band from the 1980’s Post Punk era (who ironically didn’t have any female members) but the collective femme fatale force of the post-truth pandemic era. The term Femme Fatale originates from the French meaning Fatal Female or Dangerous Woman. She emerges in art and literature as Judith, painted extensively by Artemisia Gentileschi, who felt an uncanny kinship with this muse. Julia Kristeva (2011) wrote in her book The Severed Head: Capital Visions, about the relationship between Gentileschi and Judith, painting them both as feminist heroines. The male dominated world conversely describes them as being simultaneously precarious, dangerous and trouble.
Conceivably dangerous times calls for dangerous women; Anna Tsing (2015:2) describes the precarity of our times in her wonderful book The Mushroom at the end of the World, saying: “It seems that all our lives are precarious—many of us […] confront the condition of trouble without end.” While theorist Donna Haraway (2016:1) describes the need for women to make kin as a way to flourish in a damaged and dangerous world: “The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present.”
The artists in this group exhibition does not necessarily engage with the Femme Fatale concept on a thematic level, it would be too literal to expect a group of diverse women to interpret such a topic solely on the content of concept and theme. We, the artists, are the embodiment of what it means to be female in this precarious time where making kin trumps fighting tooth and nail for our place in society. We have emerged from the fight fought by our 2nd and 3rd wave predecessors to a place where we must work together if we are to ensure a future for ourselves and those who will come after us. As diverse as this group of artists are, varied in media, concept, background and environment, we are informed by the same unifying thread: an ethic of care, which emerges from working alongside each other, to strengthen, encourage and support not only each other, but also the world around us.
How do we go about it? By telling and listening to each other’s stories: Whether the maternal stories told by Larissa, or the accounts of making kin in the urban areas as told by Ilse, Jo’s stories of connection on a molecular level, or my own making meaning of my tribe’s connection to the earth. As Shenaz relates her story rooted in cultural soil, which converses with Anina’s tale. Every single work in this space is conversing with each other, it is, to steal Donna Haraway’s phrase a “bumptious kind, of response” or rather a conversation between an “extraordinary collective of bumptious women.” Ours is not a story of reconciliation and standing together, we have always been connected, we have always been one, we are just now rediscovering the weaving of the fabric:
We are kin, learning to live and die well together in this moment, stirring up trouble as we grow alongside each other, restoring a broken world while building quiet places (Haraway 2016:1).