Fir Gallery is pleased to announce that our group exhibition of female artists, HER, will open on October 29th. The exhibition will last till November 27th, featuring works from a total of 14 female artists from abroad and at home. By juxtaposing diversified works in the field of art and by engaging with the environment governed by patriarchal system, HER, as its name implies, seeks a female-centered way of thinking and outlines the spiritual profile of female artistic practices from fragmented and tattered discourses of gender issues and female subjectivity in China.

The article published by scholar Linda Nochlin in 1971, Why Are There No Great Women Artists? initiated discussion on the history of feminist art, or art history with female-centrism as an ideological structure. Nochlin’s argument deconstructed the “romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying, and monograph-producing” art historical substructure that was imperative to forming the attribute “Great” for those male artists. These qualities are specific byproducts of a patriarchal society, disregarding historical and social contexts and occupying the mainstream discourse condescendingly. Female qualities, on a contrary, are soft, emotional, abundant and feminine, but their expressions have been rejected from entering the art historical pantheon yet automatically categorized as subsidiary attachments to the grand historicity. Meanwhile, postmodern feminism focuses on plurality and multiplicity, where femininity is given a fluid form and no longer exists as the antithesis of traditional masculinity or is subject to the scrutiny of binary gender structures. It is against such a backdrop that we attempt to explore the artistic practices by females who claim their subjectivity. Their visual representations reach beyond the realm of texts and present the unique and powerful strength of female artists.

Back to the present, the opening of the 59th Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams this year marked the autonomy of female art and the self-realization of feminist theory. However, the development of contemporary art in China still presents much obstacle to female art and female artists, who live under the hypocrisy of a male-centered society. This exhibition entrusts the field of art entirely to women, confronting the inherent traditions and searching for the traces of gynocentrism.

Amélie Peace, Amy Beager, Debbi Kenote, Ge Yajing, Geng Xue, Jane Hayes Greenwood, Lan Zhaoxing, Lindsey Jean McLean, Liu Zhixing, Sophie Edell, Val Smets, Vickie Vainionpää, Wang Yihao, Zhou Chi