Gender Troubles in Art Education
Vol.I 2019 – Vol.II 2020
Workshop series by Sofia Bempeza and Despina Sevasti
Gender Troubles in Art Education Vol.I
20 June 2019
Gender troubles in (art) education performative workshop discusses the hegemonic re-production of gender roles within institutions of art education in Greece in regards to the experiences of queer feminist subjectivities. The workshop focuses on feminist art and education practices that provide space and time for knowledge and art production through the politics of care, collaboration, solidarity and empowerment. The workshop seeks to contest the problematic aspects of art education in Greece, which form the on-going condition in which we teach and learn: the absence of gender theory within the academic curriculum and the lack of an institutional and policy framework, the inadequacy of the activistic attempts in this context along with the sporadic sensibilisation of individuals (within or on the sidelines of the artistic practice and education), and the impossibility of a sufficient and community forming institutional critique within the existing structures. In order to counter these disciplinary trainings in consensual patriarchy, seen as structural component of art labor and education in Greece, we are calling for queer feminist practices of learning and instituting education which reclaim the voicing of complaint, frustration and anger. Our premise is that art education should be perceived as a densely contested space, where transformative sharing on the politics of empowerment, vulnerability and affect is needed. We invite you to address our everyday experience and desires through listening, writing, shouting, laughing and sharing. How can we talk to each other facing the consolidation of invisibility, discrimination and sexism, in order to give more space to the mutual care relation between feminist subjectivities and practices among students and teachers? In which ways can we strengthen measures to take care of each other and to dismantle power relationships within learning procedures, given the fact of the complete absence of institutional policies for making formal complaints on harassment? How can we resist against “macho genius artist” attitudes and rival relationships among privileged subjectivities? In which ways queer feminist subjects raise their voice and reclaim space when the politics of desire get instrumentalized, co-opted or optionally silenced within a specific cultural field? The workshop invites art educators/art students. It constitutes an initial attempt to address these issues and open up a discussion as an on-going process.
Who we* are: Sofia Bempeza is an artist and art theorist, with teaching experience in art schools and universities in Switzerland and Germany. Despina Sevasti is an artist and art theorist working in art education in Athens.
https://sofiabempeza.org
http://despinasevasti.com
Within Aphrodite* / her* magic, her* work, her* desire, her* power, her* care
part of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival 2019
AΜΟQA (Athens Museum of Queer Arts)
Gender Troubles in Art Education Vol.II
10 January 2020
The workshop “Gender Troubles in Art Education – Volume II: The Sacred and the Holy!” addresses the entrenched layers of invisibility, discrimination, and sexism in (Greek) fine arts education, the the politics of affect within the field as well as ways to empower queer/feminist voices and practices.
We invite you to discuss and collaboratively create the recipes we (don’t) love:
– the normality of art’s sacred (male-artist-genius) monsters and how to escape
– songs of the aura of the work of art and songs of the art dinner
– taboos and other delights of domestic art
– exorcisms and witchcraft
– collective experience journals (a gift from the 2019 workshop)
– artistic cuisine of witches, sorceresses, and ghosts
– recipes for magic spells
The inaugural workshop “Gender Troubles in Art Education – Volume I” took place in June 2019 as part of the Aphrodite* / her* magic, her* work, her* desire, her* power, her* care festival.
In this communal and performative workshop, we exposed, analysed and worked against the hegemonic reproduction of misogyny, sexism and abuse within the institutional structures of (Greek) fine arts education, drawing on the experiences and embodied resistances of queer/feminist creative subjects.
AΜΟQA (Athens Museum of Queer Arts)
