F I N D I N G A R T E M I S I A / U N H E R O I C T R A D I T I O N S

Hosted in the iconic location of Brixton Village, FINDING ARTEMISIA//Un-Heroic Traditions (2019) was an exhibition of works created by Luisa-Maria MacCormack that explored the complex and layered history of our visual narratives of gender-based violence. 

These works were the culmination of six months of intense work in collaboration with six women, all of whom had personal experiences with gender-based violence. Inspired by the powerful archetypes taken from the oeuvre of Artemisia Gentileschi, a C16th female artist whose long-awaited exhibition showed at the National Gallery in 2020. 

Artemisia’s Gentileschi’s paintings are an exception to the rule of our violent, gendered history, one that is still considered ‘high art’. Paintings that depict murder and rape still dominate our national institutions, masquerading as high culture. The National Gallery in London bears only 20 works by female artists and over 50 that glorify or trivialise rape, in fact, so many of these types of works exist that they are an entire genre, one entitled ‘heroic rape’. 

This exhibition offered a direct challenge to that outdated tradition through the visual and narrative empowerment of each sitter. 

Rather than being recorded as a mute object of display, the process of creating these works was closely collaborative, hingeing on the dynamic and trust between artist and model. The traditional role of the model and artist was reversed; the model spoke through the artist’s work, sharing the narratives of their own lives, the abuse that they encountered, and their processes of healing and recovery.

Each large-scale drawing was created through multiple sittings, with works undergoing a process of experimentation, redaction and augmentation in the studio, working from memory and the emotional connection to each sitter. This process of redacting and redrawing echoes the layered nature of femxle relationships to our palimpsest of collective histories, building ghosts of underlying drawings that echo through the final works.

These portraits are records of the navigation of difficult conversations and stories, our relationship to past traditions, the act of re-authorship, and the breaking down of the eternal concept of the ‘silent muse’. They reflect the missing female narrative of personal experiences with gender based violence, from coercive control to sexual assault, that have been overlooked in centuries of ‘Un-heroic Traditions’. 

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Throughout two weeks of November 2019 The Big Art Herstory Project played host to some amazing women for a series of performances, workshops and lectures around AWARENESS of Gender Based Violence and EMPOWERING women! From Feminist Life Drawing in the Age of #metoo to Feminist Networking Evenings, Women-of-Colour specific events, Open Mic Nights, Makers workshops, Ritual Sound sessions, Self Defense classes and even Goddess Sculpture workshops! All of our events also offered a 20% discretionary discount to survivors of Gender Based Violence.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/bigartherstoryproject/events