Countless women are involved in protecting and promoting democracy around the world, but their work is often invisible. How many city programs (or even entire cities themselves) have been designed largely by uncelebrated women? The 2022 FRAC Biennale in the Centre-Val de Loire Region aims to highlight these hidden contributions to modern society with an exhibition presenting the work of 55 women. Entitled Infinite freedom, a world for feminist democracythe exhibition features pieces by artists, architects and politicians.
The pieces are designed to be experienced in conversation with the city of Vierzon, where they each present a conversation with its past, present, people and dreams for the future. Integrated into everyday landscapes, the exhibition is divided into four themes: “The utopia of territories”, “The third feminism”, “Subversive tenderness” and “The world built by women”. The latter is a parallel exhibition bringing together three French collections (Centre Pompidou, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, and FRAC Centre-Val de Loire) exploring works by women architects.
The Biennial’s website explains:The concept of “feminist democracy” that we borrow from the author Marie-Cécile Naves raises several questions that are at the heart of the Biennale: what city and urban planning programs are designed by and for women? How can their productions emerge from their invisibility? What interpretation of art history can be seen through the prism of feminisms?
“Entitled Infinite freedom, a world for a feminist democracy and dedicated to the exclusive invitation of around fifty women artists and architects, the 2022 Biennale of the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire aims above all to be a festival turned towards a new imaginary based on equality, where various social readings coexist, activists and artists. , with a view to inculcating a new type of common sense.
L’Utopia des Territoires is made up of works highlighting new dynamics of participatory democracy, such as women’s marches, set up in highly visible urban places in Vierzon. “While the geography of gender has shown that urban space is a gendered territory where women have always maintained complex relationships with the city, this Biennale is intended to be a place of symbolic appropriation”, explain the organizers.
Third Feminism explores ways in which feminism can maintain its diversity and legacy of participation in political, social, and anti-colonial struggles as interpreted through art. The organizers add “If this Biennial wants to go beyond its singular relationship to the history of art and use the concept of feminist democracy to update the interpretation of the discipline, it must therefore question the new practices of equitable citizenship, the role of women in the creation of cities and territories, while taking into account the specific history of the Vierzonnaises.
Subversive Tenderness focuses on “the contemporary alternative to the modernist avant-garde”, defining tenderness as the junction between nature and culture. To subvert this is to reverse it with an exhibition that “sometimes makes us visit beings we refuse to look at. At other times, it reminds us of our recurring temptations to contain freedoms, or to twist bodies to hurt them. Especially those of women.
The 2022 FRAC Biennale is visible until January 1, 2023 and a public works plan is available on the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire website.
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