Rejoice! Women are staking out their territory in the art world, and about time too
Rejoice! The great wheel of the women's cultural revolution turns again. The Birds Eye View film festival ended in March, as did the inaugural Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre. The shortlist for the MaxMara art prize for women has been announced, while the exhibition for the last winner, Andrea Büttner, is on at the Whitechapel gallery. Every major UK city is witnessing a revival of women's cultural activism. The Orange prize shortlist is announced soon, and in May the Pangolin gallery launches Women Make Sculpture, featuring 20 contemporary artists. If you want music, catch Ruth Barnes' show The Other Woman on Resonance FM. She's hilarious, knowledgable and plays all the women artists ignored by other radio stations.
This is women's genius, available for everyone, and it makes me happy. I'm tired of counting how many women there are (not) on every roster. I am bored of the man-worshipping, misogynistic excuses of the perpetrators. People who loathe women's events do so because they loathe women and cannot stand to be around them.
The interest Women of the World generated from creators, producers, activists and audiences demonstrates how cravenly the discriminators lie when defending their bias. Women are not too shy, too talentless, too scarce, too petty, too this or that … or not enough of something else. At WOW every room on every floor in every block was full, with events running concurrently across dozens of disciplines and hundreds of debate topics, all day, for three days.
This is not a ghetto; a ghetto is created by oppressors according to their rules. Arts misogynists haven't even bothered to make a ghetto. Instead, they honour as few women as possible. What's happening now is that we are staking out space. This is territory.