***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   [Date]: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 06:51:19 -0800
   [From]: Britta Erickson <britta2@leland.Stanford.EDU>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: Marginalization of women

Jose Tlatelpas--thank you for your comments about the representation of
female Chinese artists in Canada.  If it is, indeed, true that they are
well represented, then that is wonderful but also an anomaly.

I have been very careful to find ways to quantify the extent to which women
are marginalized in the Chinese art world.  The reason I have done that is
that this is a very emotional area for me.  I know many Chinese artists,
and I see the women being left out of exhibitions.  As I began this
project, I realized I would have to find ways to quantify things, or it
would be utterly meaningless, too much colored by my personal involvement.
So I have been gathering statistics on admissions rates to art academies,
publication rates in art publications, and rates of exposure in
exhibitions.  I can say absolutely that women are marginalized all along.
The extent to which women are excluded from exhibitions far exceeds the
extent to which they are left out of publications and not admitted to art
academies, however.  That is what led me to begin pondering the effect of
the collectors' inclinations.  So far as I can tell, mostly the collectors
are very wealthy men.  Why don't very wealthy men want to collect the works
of female artists?

Incidentally, I believe the issues I am considering are relevant to the
exchange between Pablo Helguera and Chris Drew.  Sometimes being very
emotionally involved with an issue can obscure the facts.  Chris is
obviously very emotionally involved in the issues, and while passion has
the power of conviction behind it, it sometimes muddies the arguments,
making them not always so easy to follow.  But then again, it seems
absolutely true that there are certain groups of people who wield
inordinate power over which art will succeed.  In the case of the female
Chinese artists, I do not think collectors are deliberately discriminating
against them.  In fact, with non-Chinese collectors, they may not always
even know if a work of art is by a woman or a man (they can't tell from the
names).  My strategy for dealing with this problem is to first try to
understand it as thoroughly as I can, and then try to increase awareness of
it within circles that may be able to help redress the inequalities--at
least a little bit.

--Britta

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Britta Erickson
66 Peter Coutts Circle
Stanford CA  94305
britta2@leland.stanford.edu
Tel/FAX:   650 857-1007
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/art/china/