Word of the Week: Feminisms

By Kari Schmidt

I’m contributing an article to the Enjoy Occasional Journal this year in November on the theme of ‘feminisms’ - the journal will accompany an exhibition at Enjoy and will be organised by the Enjoy Gallery Trust. Given that I’ve just finished the article, the word is on my mind a lot and I thought it would be an interesting one to consider, given that we rarely see feminism explicitly considered in contemporary art, despite its obvious continuing importance. 

We are accustomed to understanding ‘feminism’ as a singular term, connoting one, unified (read: Western, white, liberal) perspective. Conversely, the term ‘feminisms’ recognises that there are a vast variety of ways in which feminism intersects with other social issues such as gender, class, race, religion, the environment and culture. Hence, Maori feminism, eco-feminism, Islamic feminism, transfeminism, socialist feminism and so on. The Enjoy call for proposals asked a number of questions which I think exemplify the complexity this term embodies:

“What does it mean to be a feminist on the marae? What does feminism mean to a refugee from a culture where gender expectations differ from those of Aotearoa New Zealand? What does it mean to be a feminist when you shift between genders? What does feminism mean to you when you’re a mother who can’t earn enough to pay childcare? What does it mean to be a feminist when you’re a father and people talk about you babysitting your children as though you’re the backup parent? What does it mean to be a feminist when you’re deeply involved in a patriarchal religious belief system?”

One example of ‘feminisms’ can be seen in Enjoy’s recent show by Chantal Fraser, It’s Incredible... It’s All Ours, where the artist considered the entitlement of European men travelling to the Pacific Islands to indigenous women through engaging with the notion of adornment: “Via experiences of seduction and longing, the curiosities and romanticism of colonialism are considered in reference to the past and allude to consequences of colonialism from a female perspective.” In this way, the intersection between race/colonialism and feminism was explored in Fraser’s work. 

It’s Incredible... It’s All Ours is just one example of the way in which ‘feminisms’ allows for a much broader, complex understanding of the issues at stake in feminism today. However, the concept is vastly under-explored within artist project spaces and contemporary art generally in New Zealand. That Enjoy intends to address this by featuring an exhibition and journal on the subject is progressive and a bold move from the Enjoy Trust for their 2015 exhibition. 

Image 1. An image from Chantal Fraser’s It’s Incredible... It’s All Ours, Enjoy Gallery, 2015. (image: Shaun Matthews).