‘We Are Here’ - An exhibition of Artworks by BME Women Artists

    

Image by Erin Aniker

In July 2017 I went to see the the Art exhibition ‘We Are Here’  an exhibition of Artworks by BME Women Artists.

Using a variety of materials, methods and technology

these insightful artworks explored the thoughts and feelings BME Women growing up in Britain. Looking at the artworks was more than just a chance to reflect. It brought back my own experiences of growing up in Britain, memories of how in the late 70s.  In those days I had been so bold and confident in giving what I thought was useful advice to friends and siblings on dealing with those racists and bullies in school, yet when it came to defending myself, I had been hopeless in challenging people in power…instead I would search for comfort in dreams of my 'idyllic past'….I can still remember how upset I felt on the day we were told that we would no longer be getting our usual carton of milk because Margaret Thatcher, the Education minister, had passed policy to cut it. 

  

But this exhibition was different, It was not sentimental, not longing for a lost world, not struggling with how to 'fit in'…..it was full of artworks communicating a diversity of experiences of childhood, identity and presence in public spaces. It expressed a consciousness of the different forms of racism and it seemed to to be saying, this is us, this is our struggle, this is our past, we don’t need any pity……and this is how we see ourselves…  

Joy Miessi through abstract shapes, figures and writing titled: 'Expected to centralise my image on mainstream beauty' expresses how it feels to be a Black Women struggling to challenge mainstream ideas of beauty. In the work 'I'd pray for the Women who helped me rise' she acknowledges the inspiration and empowerment provided by strengthening links between younger and older Black Women, in the struggle to determine their lives individually and collectively… 

Expected to centralise my image on mainstream beauty

I'd pray for the Women who helped me rise

Joy Miessi is based in London. Joy translates moments, conversations, feelings and intimate thoughts into visual pieces for reflection.

El-Wak Stadium, Accra

Jess Nash’s vibrant paintings (El-Wak stadium, Accra and Aerial perspective) of Ghana ask ‘Where you from?’, they show how the past is always here with us in everything we do, feel and think. The way the colours of the fields, roads and walls all blend together, the aerial perspective of the paintings, the way the shapes of the buildings relate to the spaces around them all reveal how coexistence rather than distance shapes her world here and there… 

Aerial perspective

Danika Magdelena’s  photos  taken from her: ’Girls don't cry’ series states: ‘My goal was to show girls that heartbreak is something we all go through and we shouldn’t be ashamed of. Some of us feel more intensely than others, and with this project, I want to say that you are not alone, and you will not remain alone. You can express yourself in whatever way you desire’. She expresses that emotional world which is so much a part of us our very being. That emotional world which with the brutal 'free market hands' of capitalism, patriarchy and racism carves and compartmentalises us up into smaller and smaller pieces... 

Photo by Danika Magdelena

Olivia Twist’s ‘The Babe With The North Face Puffer’ drawn with a black sharpie on lime green paper. Its of a young Black Woman with glasses looking directly at the the viewer. The brightness of the lime green and the wavy lines of the skin contrast with the plain lips, eyes, eyebrows and glasses all force the viewer to confront themselves and ask questions.  

The Babe With The North Face Puffer

The zip on the The North Face jacket leads the viewers eyes straight to the face, making it the central focus of this drawing. While looking at this artwork I asked myself - what is she thinking? what is her story? where is she? what is her relationship to the artist?

                                                                                        

With her left shoulder resting on the wall beside her, she appears relaxed, however, her face with its black wavy lines suggests something else. This brings together the struggle of the artist, the woman being drawn and the viewer. This is not just the struggle to categorise, simplify, or express but to actually immerse yourself in her world and to see it from her point of view. The North Face jacket provides an armour and the direct gaze through the glasses speaks, ‘I am who I am, I have every right to be here, I am part of you’ …

We got off at Westfield

                                                                                                                   























Another artwork by Olivia Twist, 'We got off at Westfield' is of two women, the younger one appears to be walking with her left hand on the left shoulder of the older woman while her right hand holds an mobile phone to her ear. She has long wavy black hair and is wearing a black Adidas sweatshirt with tracksuit bottoms. Her face is lowered as she concentrates on listening to the person on the phone. The older woman is leaning forwards.  She has short hair, is wearing a turtle neck striped jumper with a pair of dark striped trousers. She is looking sideways at the viewer.  They are walking past a shop window with a poster advertising fast food. Written in neat handwriting and in capital letters - Fish and chips, Chicken wings and chips £6.00,  

Chilli Chicken or Lamb £5.95

Jalfrezi Chicken or Lamb £5.50

Shatkora Chicken or Lamb £5.75

Masala Chicken or Lamb £6.50

Prawn and King Prawn dishes 

Dansak Chicken or Lamb £5.50

Korahi Chicken or Lamb £5.50

The very act of creating this everyday scene with its fast foods advert, branded sportswear, personal mobiles and the two Black Women walking, talking and listening  has shattered the power of the market in shaping identity and relationships. 

The older woman staring back at the viewer and the younger woman with her attention on the voice at the other end of her phone with her hand on the shoulder of the older woman, these human  connections immediately subvert the dominant discourse and presence of competitive individual consumers in pursuit of economic self-interest. 

Olivia Twist is a london based illustrator who ‘has a keen interest in exploring concepts of heritage, oral history and the ‘shock of the familiar’. Olivia routinely explores concepts of routine, the mundane and nostalgia. 

Dayo Adesina’s artwork also caught my eye. At first glance Dayo’s collage,‘Stomach Ache’ looks like just a number of random unrelated images stuck onto blocks of bright colours drawing you into a child’s world. But give yourself time. You will see that the colours have meaning, the images are connected, and together with the text are communicating a message. The central focus is a photo of a young black girl with blue eyes, wearing pale yellow African clothes. She is looking directly at the viewer. Behind her stand two young women with pink blank faces and red hair with the no facial features.  Both of them are wearing a uniform of a skirt and a sweatshirt (one red, one blue). All three figures stand in the centre of a pink circle (same pink as the faces) on top of a vertical bright red cylinder (which looks like a stick of seaside rock). Behind them is a sheet of grey photographic paper standing in a portrait position. Below them embedded in the red (similar to the red of the coca cola label) and in sharp focus stands a picture of a Coca Cola bottle with vegetable roots inserted into its mouth.

Stomach Ache

The white text framing the coca cola bottle, ending on the same green as the Milo carton,  reads: ‘Sweet like a clue to help with with confusion’. The word ‘confusion’ appears below a large black plate with a purple Tinky Winky (from the children’s TV programme Teletubbies) holding a red bag, standing on plate's edge.  Next to Tinky Winky are cartons of Nestles Milo stacked from  four up to one. Emerging out of the green is a rectangle of blue with another set of Nestles Milo cartons, only this time they are stacked in the shape of a tree. Behind this carton tree is a photo of a fruit and vegetable stall which looks like a Market scene in Africa and behind this is a photo of an Ice Cream van with the text ‘Ali Baba’s’ above the window and the words ‘Freshly made soft ice cream’ with a picture of children playing and having fun below it (the only image which shows people moving in the whole collage). Above the Ice Cream van on a light blue painted background is a picture of a smiling child’s mouth, showing  a toothless gum with baby teeth with letter S pouring out like saliva. Dayo Adesina’s collage reflects on the corporate consumption culture shaping childhood experiences for BME young women in Britain and in Africa. The destructive role of Coca Cola and Nestle on young children’s teeth, bodies and self image is contrasted with the fruit and vegetable stall in Africa. The sweetness of the sugar (from coca cola, Ice cream, stick of rock and Milo) and the image of the two girls with blank pink faces standing with the black girl wearing African clothes, looking unhappy, and the photo of Tinky Winky all point to the static and alienating way that global consumer culture attempt to define, control and shape gender, race and sexuality (Outside). The collage also expresses the confusion created as BME women’s collective experiences and their active selves are erased.  

This artwork shows the way in  which culture of imperialism and racism forms a lens through which we see and shapes the how see ourselves and how we remember ourselves. Dayo Adesina’s ‘Stomach Ache’ is  more than an artwork for the public consumption of ideas, its power lies in the fact that by producing this collage Dayo Adesina has created a space to think and also made visible her very own experiences (Red Spoon, Red Knife).

Outside

Red Spoon Red Knife

Dayo Adesina studied Fine Art at the university of creative arts in Farnham before switching to the BA illustration course in her final year. Her work examines childhood, collective memory, place, sexuality and the body.  

I Grew up holding signs

Sofia Niazi’s work  entitled: Still no News, was a project for her MA. The images, (using internet based GIF making tools) are of women and girls carrying out routine tasks inside the home. In the image, ‘ I grew up holding signs’, the young woman in the centre is writing on a large blank white sheet of paper and on the desk close to her lay a pair of scissors and what some pots of glue. Her table lamp, exercise book  and pens have been moved to the edge of her study table. Three empty placards stand against the wall and the wide open door to her room links what she is doing inside to events outside. Sofia Niazi through her work aims to show how the daily lives of women have been destroyed by the ‘war on terror’. The overpowering straight lines, the stark, empty rooms, the lack of any decorative items carrying memories, the focus on the functional furniture all create feelings of sadness and longing. The intense warm colours (Still no news, No guests allowed) emphasise the restricted space  (physical and emotional) forced on those left behind.  The images are of Women waiting for news about family members who have been taken away without charge, subject to  house arrest or been sent to prison. Women who are trying to get justice for their loved ones…Women who refuse to give up and Women who refuse to be invisible…

Still no news

No guests allowed

Another work by Sofia Niazi (below): needs no additional comments, it speaks for itself. In the first frame, there is a sketch of an Asian patient receiving a vaccine from a Doctor. The text reads: 

Patient: I am travelling to Pakistan in a few weeks and the 

Doctor's reply remind us why there is a need for campaigns like Docs not Cops: Is that for business, pleasure or 
‘t_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _’?

In the second frame a female student with a reading list in front of her asks a librarian with a computer monitor on her right, ‘I am looking  for books about revolution and radical politics’ the librarian replies reveals the who is being criminalised and put under state surveillance: ‘Level D, just opposite the CCTV camera’

The third frame expresses visually the impact of the governments prevent policies in the Education system. A Muslim school student has written A for Allah and is looking up at a teacher who with a suspicious look asks: What other Islamist words did Daddy teach you? 

Sofia Niazi is an artist and illustrator working and living in London. She employs various digital and hand drawn techniques in her work and explores themes relating to politics, technology and animals.

There are so few exhibitions like this one which bring together so many different experiences and make such strong statements about growing up and living in Britain as BME Woman. It would also be very inspiring to produce an exhibition about the Black Women Refugees, Asylum seekers or Domestic Workers  who are struggling against the racist and sexist immigration laws. They are also challenging the idea of what it means to be a Black Woman in Britain today…

Artists who exhibited their work at the ‘WE ARE HERE’ exhibition of artworks by BME Women in Britain from 6th-9th July 2017: 

Dayo Adesina, www.cargocollective.com/dayoadesina

Aleesha Nandhra, aleeshanandhra.com 

Leyla Reynolds, leylagracereynolds.tumblr.com

Sofia Niazi, sofianiazi.co.uk

Jess Nash, jessnash.co.uk

Freya Bramble-Carter, freyabramblecarter.com 

Danika Magdelena, siriusfilm.tumblr.com

Kariima Ali, kariimaali.com

Lilian Nejatpour, lilian-nejatpour.com

Liv&Dom, livanddom.com

Nasreen Shaikh Jamal al Lail, nasreenjml.com

Olivia Twist, yesoliviatwist.com

Joy Miessi, joymiessi.com

Erin Aniker, erinaniker.com 

Victoria’s Secret - Empowering or Exploiting Women?

(and constructing/controlling sexuality)

At a time when muslim women are being attacked in public spaces for not revealing their bodies and not showing respect for ‘western values’, ‘western’ companies like Victoria’s Secret police women’s bodies in the private sphere while exploiting them in the public sphere. 

Victoria’s Secret lingerie was once made by prisoners and today continues to be made by Women and children working in sweat shop conditions  

Workers at the Intimate Fashions Factory, Chennai

In the US, Victoria’s Secret dominates the market in women’s underwear. It has over 1000 stores and its fashion shows on American television receive more views than the Superbowl. 

On Wednesday 7th December 2016 Victoria’s Secret opened its eighteenth store in the UK at Westfield, Shepherds Bush, right next to the East India Company store. Limited Brand’s who own Victoria’s Secrets states that its mission is “to empower women and help its customers to ‘feel sexy, bold and powerful” 

Ray Raymond, the heterosexual man who founded Victoria’s Secret, claimed he was too embarrassed to buy lingerie for his wife, so he decided to  create a safe space where men could be comfortable’ (ie escape from challenges by those ‘other’ women) to buy lingerie which makes  the ‘real’ Women in their lives more ‘beautifully feminine’. The victorian era atmosphere in these stores with their darkened rooms was designed to create the hush, hush, intimacy and privacy where adults (especially men) had ‘personal freedom’. This equation of intimacy with sexual intimacy and privacy brought into the the ‘bedroom’

not only the product but Victoria’s Secret message of sexual objectification and commodification and attempted to make it part of normal everyday life. All part of a ‘culture’ of Women being viewed by the male gaze and Women’s bodies existing  to fulfil male sexual desire. 

In this early period Victoria’s Secret also attempted to cleanse itself from the ‘dirty’ image that ‘corporate culture’ associated with underwear and presented Victoria’s Secret as a form of high art. The adverts included soft lighting and images of women in light coloured, dreamy backgrounds with classical music. This approach was similar to the classical European nude painters. Many of these painters (usually men) thought that the ideal nude should be constructed with an arm from one woman, a leg from another and the face of another, all a created to gratify the objects owner.

A framed black white photo at the 

entrance of the Victoria’s Secret store

at Westfield 

The 1990s saw a dramatic change in Victoria’s Secret marketing. Instead of Women being portrayed as passive objects manipulated for male desire and the male gaze, they were now to present themselves as ‘sexually active and sexually liberated, freedom loving’ women living in a post feminist world full of choices where they are fulfilling their 'own desire' by reflecting and shaping themselves to fit the male gaze and desire of the corporate market.  

In the text used for advertising Women’s underwear, Victoria’s Secret has not only incorporated heterosexual sex and used images similar to those in pornography but it has contributed to the ‘pornographication of culture’, where a pornographic sexualised presentation of the body is almost an act of rebellion, leaving  behind an era when pornography and human sexuality were separated.  Many of the ‘Angels’ in Victorias Secret catalogues are playboy models. Limited Brands claims to ‘redefine what it means to be sought after’. The message now is that these women are doing it for themselves. This empowerment (from push up bras to thigh high boots) comes from consuming and being consumed and is supposed to make women feel good about themselves. Victorias Secrets world is one where Women can blame themselves for their feelings of anger and sadness and on their own ‘bad and poor choices’. 

   East India Company shop and the pink Victoria’s Secret store on the left 

They can also make these feelings go away with just one swift ‘free act’ of self indulgence’.. consuming and buying lingerie….Recently Jenny Shaffer, (02:12)(a former Marks and Spencer trainee, founder of Knickerbox and now a chief creative officer at Victoria’s Secrets) spoke about transforming the sale of the ‘unmentionables’ to creating the ‘joy of making the emotional connection with buying underwear’ while Jane Garvey, the radio 4, Woman’s Hour presenter directs the discussion to those ‘special bra and special pants’ (28:36). Bridget Minamore, poet and writer, the only Black woman on this Women’s Hour programme at least raised the racism experienced by the ‘muslim woman on the beach who wasn't even wearing a burkini' (33:51) after having recalled her own experiences of being rebellious teenage who was transformed when she was ‘persuaded’ to wear the right bra. The huge bright pink and shiny black store at Westfield with its all women staff (all dressed in  black) and it’s all women customers has tall walls with high ceilings. On these walls are images of Women waiting to be consumed. 

The tall walls screen the fashion shows where angels with wings ‘assert’ their desire and power wearing Victoria’s Secret lingerie, constructing and reinforcing a femininity and beauty (thin, youthful, tall, white) to fulfil white male heterosexual fantasies. 

Front Entrance to Victoria’s Secret store 

at Westfield

The Women who enact these  fantasies are supposed to own this same corporate construction of sexuality. Women learn to value themselves according to what they have or do not have and anything that they do not have they can get by consuming or being consumed. This same corporate commodified sexuality seeps into lesbian relationships (30:02). 

This commodity feminism while leaving untouched the structural factors preventing women from having it all, seems to be saying that there is no difference between what women want and what men want of them. Commodity feminism affects human relationships by changing them into relations between objects. At the same time this self-policing transforms external oppression into an internal regulation creating a new subject - a ‘smooth’, ‘slick’, ‘sanitised’ being stripped of ‘feelings’, a corporate identity which can easily slot into a world where everything is for sale. 

Women are encouraged to internalise the idea that they are objects of male vision and are there to feed an appetite but not have one of their own that they have constructed. John Berger writes, ‘men act and women appear. Men |ook at women. Women watch themselves   being looked at.                                                                               

The High walls screening the victoria’s

Secret fashion shows

This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’ (Berger 1977, p47).

Kavita Krishnan Secretary of the of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) and editor of ‘Liberation’, publication of the Communist CPI-ML, states that women workers in Victoria Secret’s factories in Tamil Nadu are kept in prison like conditions. Kavita Krishnan states that this is just a mirror of the controls and policing women face in the family. Employers fraudulently recruit teenage girls under the now abolished “Sumangali Scheme” (p19), and their movements and social interactions are strictly controlled. The employers tell parents that this is all done to ‘protect’ the girls and ensure they are ‘good daughters’. This shows that capitalism does not liberate women from patriarchy.

Kavita Krishnan points out that  these controls from “modern” capitalists are aimed at preventing workers from organising and mobilising(P53). The ruling party also sanctions these gender roles with its concept of ‘Industry-family’.

Cover of a report on Young Dalit Women experiences of working in the Garment Industry, April 2012

Victoria’s Secret is part of a wider misogynist sexualised consumption culture in London.

Victoria’s Secret Pink launched 16/10/12 targets the 15- to 22-year-olds.Their aim to sells underwear etc with 'the intent to transition buyers into more adult product lines, such as Angels, Very Sexy, and Body by Victoria

Susanna Cordner, researcher for the Victoria and Albert exhibition had great difficulty in finding out what underwear women wanted the man to be wearing ‘to titilate’. She found that it was the process of undressing captured by the 501 Levi Advert of 1985, that women found sexually attractive and not the sexual objectifying of the man. Susanna Cordner found it very frustrating that there was ‘no acknowledged market for this, ‘its women in underwear that are fetishised’. All this says a lot about the market in lingerie and the way it shapes the way Women see themselves. . 

Women with purchasing power are at liberty to buy ‘Freedom and Power’ in Victoria’s Secret stores.  However, those ‘other’ Women who refuse to worship this corporate way of life or who are destroyed by it can expect little or no justice from the state.

This idea of Women’s empowerment via the lingerie market is further reinforced by NGOs like Oxfam with its projects like Frip Ethique in Senegal. Here, Oxfam tells us that bra’s are very complex and as Senegal has ‘no factory to make their own bra’s’ Oxfam is helping to empower ‘these disadvantaged people’ with employment creating projects like Frip Ethique which sell second hand bras from the West. Oxfam seems to be blind to the obvious hygiene issues here, as well as its own cultural racism.

Victoria’s Secrets objectification and commodification of Women’s bodies, is extremely damaging. As the scale of violence against Women rises and the austerity measures imposed by Theresa May’s Conservative government force Women to stay in violent situations as they continue to cut funds to women’s refuges.

Donald Trump and his family, are also open supporters of Victoria’s Secret and Limited Brands, but neither of them are on the list of companies being boycotted

However despite all this  there are individuals and 

organisations who are critical of these corporate messages . 

There needs to be more action to target the corporates and make demands on the government maybe through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image. We could strengthen the links with the women workers in the factories providing for these corporates. 

Some women have already started targeting sexist advertising hoardings as women did in the 1980s and demanding. 

Jill Posener 1979 (Pho

A Protein World advert for Slender Blend, A weight loss product, 2015

There also others who have been demanding an end to licences for lap dancing

clubs etc. We could also expose the link between the rise of ‘misogynistic corporate culture’ and the changing role of the state, we could target  Victorias Secrets and others like it and demand their closure….none of this is popular but more collective feminist action in this area can only move things forward ….or we could just raise these issues at the Million Women Rise march on 11th March or at the Stop Trump protests happening all over country tomorrow, 20th Feb. The debate in parliament starts at 4.30pm.