“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognising how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, We Should all be Feminists (2014)
Role Play explores the complexity of the contemporary spectrum of femininity through works of art that extract and identify the semiotical structures which define feminine experience and gender roles. In order to underline the plurality of the feminine experience, the artists in the exhibition both metabolise and reinterpret those mechanisms that attempt to shape the idea of “the woman”.
In contemporary society capitalism and consumer culture bring forward unattainable standards of gender expectations - how we should be and how we should behave. Therefore, the role of this exhibition is to challenge those preconceived notions of gender and femininity in the attempt to erase the discrepancy between the “celebration of youth and beauty” and the simultaneous denigration of its bearers - women.
Participating Artists:
Bea Bonafini, Arvida Byström, Motoko Ishibashi, Tina Lugo, Olek, Ruben Natal San-Miguel, Tabita Rezaire, Yngvild Saeter, Alexandria Smith
Role Play is a collaborative curatorial project between The Orange Garden and Postmasters Gallery.
Opening:
7 March 2019
18:00 - 21:00
With a performance by Olek
Exhibition Dates:
7 March - 7 April 2019
Tuesday - Saturday
14:00 - 19:00