Contemporary_Female_Artists

Artist can be identified as members of particular groups or movements through their artmaking practice that inevitably allows them to influence each other as well as conveying a particular personal meaning through their art. Due to the changes in the art world over time, beliefs and practices have changed and movements and groups have been more relevant to artists. Vanessa Beecroft, Julie Rrap and Sophie Calle are prime examples of artists associated with a group or movement. Feminism is a movement that advocates gender equality for women and campaigns for women's rights and interests. A revolutionary change for Women’s liberation, a movement that addresses "the issues that divided women." As a leading figure for the feminism movement Vanessa Beecroft, a “postfemisnist artist” focuses on large-scale performance art, usually involving nude, live female models. Each of the performances made for a specific location and often references the political, historical, or social associations of the place where it is held. Beecroft’s work ‘show- 1998’ is deceptively simple in its execution, provoking questions around identity politics and voyeurism in the complex relationship between viewer, model and context. Vanessa Beecroft's performances have been described as art, fashion, brilliant, terrible, evocative, provocative, sexist, disturbing, and empowering as not only does it challenge the audience it also confronts them to real issues that allow the audience to ponder the impact of these images. The primary material in her work is the live female figure, which remains ephemeral, and separate. These 20 women appeared at the Guggenheim museum, mainly unclothed, similar, unified through details like hair color, or identical shoes, stand motionless, unapproachable and regimented in the space while viewers watch them. Symbolic of Beecroft’s underlying message to the audience- beauty fades; the models became tired as their beauty didn’t last because they were subjects of show the girls became sculptures rather than real women. Challenging the increasingly common expectation that not only men but also the media have only women in today’s society. “I like the freedom to do actions that embarrass society”. Beecroft shifted her gender focus in this piece including men “within her dilemma of sacrificing the “self” by conforming to a collective standard” on the deck of “U.S.S intrepid” all men, all the same and all in uniform. “Beecroft exploits the process of perception and identification, often dissolving genders and missing genres, in order to pinpoint the conflict between image and self image in a way both provocative and healing”. Contemporary Australian artist Julie Rrap uses her own body to explore issues of identity and women’s rights through media forms such as installations, digital photography, sculpture, photomontage and film. ‘Body Double (2007)’ clearly conveys a message that the female form almost becomes a political icon- owned by the male world and the media. Rrap's art predominately alludes to historical European art created by male artists for men in which females where purely objects for their own viewing pleasure. Rrap’s work is simple but despite that have allot of depth and meaning. "Perhaps it is not so much that my work lacks expression," Julie Rrap writes, "but that the form of this expression is more veiled or indirect." Her works included photographic images of her posing before her own reproductions of well-known paintings by the likes of Munch, Degas and Magritte, with Rrap assuming the role of the person in the picture. Rrap uses base materials such as rubber. Over time she progressed to human hair, milk, blood and urine. Rrap has used her own body in various postures through shadow play, masquerade, mirror and mime. She performs as a ‘body double’ for the still and moving camera. Drawing on the notion that gender is a performance in its self, Rrap has forged the theme of the stand-in, a prosthetic body double, and her works often invite viewers to imagine. In Rrap’s earlier work “Persona and Shadow”, her photography represents the women’s role in ‘society’ and is a paradox of famous figures such as Jesus and Madonna the mosaics are a representation to the audience that women are much more than objects of lust and desire. Inevitably Rrap's art raises ethical and aesthetic issues in relation to how we depict, interpret and understand the human form as well as gender based issues. Sophie Calle, photographer, French writer conceptual artist and installation artist, evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing. She is fascinated by the interface between our public lives and our private selves. This has led her to investigate patterns of behavior using techniques similar to those of a private investigator, a psychologist, or a forensic scientist. It has also led her to investigate her own behavior so that her life, as lived and as imagined, has informed many of her most interesting works. Calle got an email from a lover, dumping her. She asked a team of a 107 women – all experts in their professional fields – to respond to it. “Take care of yourself” Looks deep into a personal relationship and shows public intimacy in a visible space. Each email that is manipulated by professionals becomes louder and deeper with each new variant on the text. Also in her exhibition “Public Places” twenty panels of black and white photographs of Jerusalem's eruv line the walls of the gallery, symbolically recreating the sacrosanct space. Calle also asked fourteen residents of the city, both Israeli and Palestinian, to take her to public places they consider private and share their personal associations with the sites. Public Spaces - Private Places explores the boundaries of space in Jerusalem, a city bitterly divided by claims to its sovereignty. For centuries, western culture has divided and gendered space among the public (masculine vs. Feminine) Sophie Calle pushes the boundaries of art and between public and private lives based on her own personal history of heart ache and experience. Due to the changes in the art world, over time beliefs and practices have changed and formed through movements and groups that have allowed artists to express their own representation of feminism. Vanessa Beecroft, Julie Rrap and Sophie all convey a strong underlying meaning through their art and succeed their aims to challenge the audience’s perception on women and equal gender.