Breath
From the sculptor’s mouth wide open — a mouth/vulva — a small sculpture is born; the goddess, an archetypical representation of fertility, of abundance. A life-producing force. Thus, circular thought is created, the idea of superimposing life and art, creator and creature. The creator’s touch does not mean the mere mould of matter; rather, it involves breathing life into art.
Text on O escultor e a deusa, a sculpture by Ernesto Neto (Rio de Janeiro, 1964); exhibited at «Soplo» Exhibition (MALBA, Buenos Aires, February 2020, curated by Valeria Piccoli and Jochen Volz).
A voice. Many voices. We. Us. As an exercise to start out this text on feminism I spontaneously try to let my mind come up with random words; words that I’ve listened to; that I listen to every day. I feel overwhelmed by the weight of available bibliography among papers, notes and things posted online that I’ve been reading about feminism these past few months. But then I try not to put too much pressure on it; I mean, not doing any particular effort in organizing it or classifying it. Now I start again: collective. Movement. Manifest. Struggle. I stop and do as I can to clear my mind, letting it go blank — as it is done by someone who suddenly freezes for a second in the midst of a frenzied dance to look at the space around, and then set his or her body back again into motion — . At this point other words pop up: social justice. Feminist justice, Revolution. Sorority. Encounter. My mind blanked once again and all at once a phrase materializes, a phrase that has many times worked for me as a leitmotiv: «Revolutions return; they’re nothing original to them». I’ve written it back in my notebook, fixed it in my mind and there it lays now, next to all those piled-up random words. Yet this particular phrase helps me take a stance, choose a little piece of land, a single floor tile on where to stand and think about feminism — and know where to move from there.
It is from such statement that I began seeing myself in the legacy of all those women that have done so much over the course of history — and continue doing so — for the feminist movement; those girls full of life, the revolution — as I see it — belongs to them. And so it is that I come to remember our own feminist pioneers and their struggle for democracy and universal suffrage back in the ends of the XIX century; I think of Evita as a symbol of such achievement in Argentina, where women were finally allowed to vote in 1947 and universal suffrage was recognized as a universal human right. Hers has been a great voice that made itself heard. A feminist achievement. After such a landmark there were many others: the cultural revolution of the 1960s, women’s liberation and, gradually, the progressive disuse of the idea of woman as a figure belonging almost exclusively to the private household domain to start taking part in larger, broader, more public issues and — actually — take possession of the public space as a whole, a historical territory of masculinity.
Invisibility of women throughout history — both in the public and private scope, in decision-making positions and within the intellectual milieu — is and has always been functional to globalization and capitalism as a production system. A few days ago, a partner of mine sent me a work of art that left a profound impression on me. This particular work she has sent me deals with the absence of women in the history of art. Recently, Spanish artist María Gimeno carried out a performance she called Queridas viejas [Dear old ladies], in which she included women in E. H. Gombrich’s (1909–2001) otherwise canonical History of Art. Her performance reclaims and defends the place of great female western artists in a history of art narrated without gender boundaries. Ready to attack, María deals out justice by means of including the work of female artists to a 4-inches thick book. She cuts, edits, adds pages: those pages she add were missing; were stolen from us; were pages that made all of us invisible; such profound impression is the direct result of that demand for visibility. A claim to get in, integrate with, include us, being included.
‘Impossible’ just means it’ll take a little longer, read a sign painted on a wall near my house.
Make us invisible; deny us the right to a voice of our own, our thought, operate also over our own bodies turns out to be a common practice seen in different spheres of action amidst our society. Let it be clear: erase or ignore our artistic or intellectual production is an act of violence.
However, the most painful thing of all of what’s going on — and that goes all through Latin America — is gender violence: physical violence, verbal and psychological aggression is what, in the end, drives us to being killed silently. Statistics about femicides in our country and Latin America are chilling. Only in Argentina and according to official records (2019), one woman is killed out of gender violence every 26 hours. The response given by the NI UNA MENOS feminist collective is one out of repugnance and exasperation; a reaction to an untenable state of things that congregates the voice of ALL OF US shouting that we want us alive. As poet Susana Chávez said: not one more of us dead; the dead of women cannot become a standard. And so it was that then, with the NI UNA MENOS collective began this network, this wave that has come to us with a more and more powerful and unstoppable strength. An awakening that comes to us and drives us like a gentle breeze to later turn into a hurricane, organizing all of us out in the streets to fight for our rights and fight for the ability to access safe, legal and state funded abortion, knowing — as we do — that we will not give up until equality is reached.
I might, then, talk about mi own awakening. It happened back in 2018, in between the repeated, outspoken calls for social justice. What was then known as the «green wave» dragged me into the streets. I think of it as a movement that progressively creates a sort of social conscience that will ultimately be capable of coming up with a profound political and cultural transformation. Back then, I felt the need to sprout, to emerge and to be a part of a movement that was already happening all around me and join all those other women with whom, in its differences and disparities, I have been able to find common ideas and different ways of rethinking feminism. I feel, every step we take, that this is a collective construction; a new know-how, a refreshed way of defining undiscovered horizons in the context of a society that is desperately seeking for justice and equal rights for women. I fell in love with these ideas: tolerance, inclusion, diversity, growth; the possibility for a fairer future.
We have come to organize ourselves. We do things. We do things wrong; we summon us, then disperse, for the everyday besiege us. But if the horizon is clearly defined, then the space to be, to listen and to be listened to eventually will always be there.
Reaching agreements, arguing, giving in, thinking about how to do things differently. Creating, over all. Never stop creating; for they can never take that away from us.
The idea of encounter and fusion between what is masculine and what is feminine. The constant and collective exercise of coming up with new, community-built ideas on feminism and the inquiry around the reconnaissance of new social dimensions, more complex every time, is what moves me these days. To come to an agreement in terms of a change in the way one perceives things than can unleash a chain of reactions towards different realities.
To all the women who had awakened me; I’ll be forever grateful; and here I am, learning. Is the desire that is the fuel; the desire for a different world.
We’re moved; mobilized, driven by the urgent need for inclusion, for being listened to, able, all of us, to decide over our bodies, occupy the space that belongs to us and, above all, have a voice of our own.
Jimena Passadore is an acting profesor of the Universidad de Buenos Aires Architecture, Design and Urbanism Planning School (FADU — UBA), visual artist and graphic designer.
She is a member of HAY FUTURA feminist collective of designers.
Article written for Ideas #11 — Dossier feminisms.
Ideas is a magazine of modern and contemporary philosophy.
