At the origin of Arts aux Féminins, the desire to give voice to women artists. Artists whose work questions the feminine condition but, beyond that, raises fundamental human and societal questions. Political and strong, their universal works speak to everyone, beyond a divisive gender limit. This event therefore in no way claims to support a radical and sectarian feminism but on the contrary inclusive: its goal is to question, through the facets of femininity, everything that constitutes the ambiguities of our humanity.
Collected and displayed across several sites, the chosen works explore the condition of women through three major issues.
Reversing beauty / unmuzzle the muses : around the body, the nude and its attributes. The chosen works sometimes question the liberated and creative body, sometimes the body revealing the relationships of domination, oppression, violence and injunctions imposed by society, in the social or intimate sphere.
Rewriting History, myths and diversions : around the rewriting of the great History in the feminine. Certain approaches give us to reread the great myths or popular imagery, by deconstructing the "masculine" myths and by coming out of the shadow of the feminine figures, forgotten by History.
The selected creations explore the ambivalences of motherhood, between life and death, liberation and suffering. Made of tensions and embracing contradictions, the works also question the reductive clichés that confine femininity to boxes, as well as the role of the mother and the lover. Some artists also question the relationship to childhood and integrate their own experiences of parenthood into the field of creation.
