By Joanne Shurvell – Originally published at Forbes.com
For one week every June, art galleries and institutions around the world commit to showing only female artists, with many offering special talks and events. Women Artists’ Art Week (WAAW) was co-founded in 2022 in London by artist Annya Sand and art patron Catherine Hunt as a not for profit initiative to encourage the art industry to be more inclusive towards female artists and to address the imbalance of representation of female artists. From London, the annual event has gathered momentum, showing there is clearly a need for an annual event to highlight female artists.
This year’s event runs until 15 June, with 44 galleries in the U.K involved. WAAW has expanded quickly since launching and this year, seven overseas galleries are participating including the Rangi Gallery in Tanzania, the Leila Heller Gallery in the USA, three galleries in China, one in Uzbekistan and one in Singapore. A map on the WAAW website shows artlovers all of this year’s participating galleries and their exhibitions and events. It’s also useful for women artists to see which galleries are perhaps more encouraging of women artists.
Among the highlights of the female art shows this week in London is a tour on 14 June at 5pm of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new Parasol Foundation for Women in Photography. The new gallery emphasises the museum’s commitment to supporting female practitioners and championing contemporary photography, through a dynamic series of events and exhibitions.
Bowman Sculpture and Guerin Projects is presenting The Power of She – A Tribute to Women in the Arts (until 24 June), a group exhibition featuring 15 of the most important 18th and 19th century, Modern and Contemporary women artists. including: Camille Claudel, Elizabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth, juxtaposed with leading contemporary artists Emily Young, Lily Lewis and Pauline Amos. A highlight is works by 19th-century artist Camille Claudel, who, while until recently was perhaps best known for her tragic love affair with Rodin, now has her own museum, the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur- Seine. Claudel is shown alongside one of the most striking pieces in the show, a beautiful sculpture by Emily Young, The Skies Daughter, carved from a piece of Lapis Lazuli mined in a high mountainous region of North Eastern Afghanistan. As a special event during the exhibition, at 4 pm on Monday 12 June, Prima Ballerina of the English National Ballet, Natascha Mair will perform The Dying Swan, accompanied by Austrian violinist and composer Yuri Revich, as well as a talk by New York gallerist, Hong Gyu Shin, on Carla Prina and Else-Fischer-Hansen, two 20th-century female artists, whose works feature in the exhibition.
Further afield, Leila Heller gallery in Dubai is showing Beirut based multimedia artist Katya A.Traboulsi’s solo show Perpetual Identities until 1 September. Katya’s show is based on the empty sleeve of a mortar shell that she received for her birthday in 1975. The object, which had blindly sown death where it fell, ended up in her room, raised to the status of a trophy celebrating the courage of fighters or the defeat of enemies. Her later reflections on the mortar shell inspired an installation project Perpetual Identities which sought to divert the weapon from its morbid destiny and make it serve Life. Forty six shells are on display from different countries, each one handmade, using different materials, including ceramics, porcelain, resin, wood, and iron. Each is titled with a country’s name; most are produced by their native artisans. The shell becomes like a ‘book’, an inventory of myths and traditions. The many cultures and societies involved in the project enrich the object with seemingly infinite meanings.
WAAW World has set its sights on helping the public to see and appreciate the art created by female artists that we have been missing for centuries. They’re also keen to show commercial galleries the talent of female artists and their commercial potential.
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