Strangers in a Strange Land
14 February - 8 March 2020
MUŻA, Auberge d'Italie, Merchant St, Valletta
A multidisciplinary exhibition about being female in a world narrated by and designed for men. Unfinished Art Space presents its biggest project-exhibition to date; a feminist programme of events and the first temporary exhibition to be hosted by MUŻA, Malta’s National Community Art Museum. Strangers in a Strange Land forms part of Spazju Kreattiv's Art+Feminism 2020 Project, in collaboration with Wikimedia Community Malta, M3P Foundation and the Gabriel Caruana Foundation, which includes a series of curated exhibitions across three sites presenting new works by both established and emerging women artists.
Artists
Barumbara Collective
Etienne Farrell with Charlene Galea
Roxman Gatt
Letta Shtohryn
Curator
Margerita Pulè
Exhibition Designer
Tom van Malderen
Programme
Strange Land Dance Workshop: Francesca Saraullo (Barumbara Collective)
Spazju Kreattiv Theatre
Wednesday 12 February, 7pm – 9pm
Strangers in a Strange Land: Barumbara Collective
Friday 14 February, 8pm
Saturday 15 February, 8pm
Sunday 16 February, 5pm
Tickets available here.
Artist Conversation: Etienne Farrell, Charlene Galea, Letta Shtohryn
Friday 21 February 7pm
Curator’s Tour: Margerita Pulè
Sunday 23 February 3pm
My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn: Roxman Gatt
Friday 28 February, 8pm
Saturday 29 February, 8pm
Tickets available here.
Wiki Editing Workshop – Edit-A-Thon: Wiki Community Malta
Friday 6 March, 5pm - 8pm
Saturday 7 March, 10am - 4pm
Curator’s Tour: Margerita Pulè
Sunday 8 March 11:30am
MUŻA, Auberge d'Italie, Merchant St, Valletta
A multidisciplinary exhibition about being female in a world narrated by and designed for men. Unfinished Art Space presents its biggest project-exhibition to date; a feminist programme of events and the first temporary exhibition to be hosted by MUŻA, Malta’s National Community Art Museum. Strangers in a Strange Land forms part of Spazju Kreattiv's Art+Feminism 2020 Project, in collaboration with Wikimedia Community Malta, M3P Foundation and the Gabriel Caruana Foundation, which includes a series of curated exhibitions across three sites presenting new works by both established and emerging women artists.
Artists
Barumbara Collective
Etienne Farrell with Charlene Galea
Roxman Gatt
Letta Shtohryn
Curator
Margerita Pulè
Exhibition Designer
Tom van Malderen
Programme
Strange Land Dance Workshop: Francesca Saraullo (Barumbara Collective)
Spazju Kreattiv Theatre
Wednesday 12 February, 7pm – 9pm
Strangers in a Strange Land: Barumbara Collective
Friday 14 February, 8pm
Saturday 15 February, 8pm
Sunday 16 February, 5pm
Tickets available here.
Artist Conversation: Etienne Farrell, Charlene Galea, Letta Shtohryn
Friday 21 February 7pm
Curator’s Tour: Margerita Pulè
Sunday 23 February 3pm
My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn: Roxman Gatt
Friday 28 February, 8pm
Saturday 29 February, 8pm
Tickets available here.
Wiki Editing Workshop – Edit-A-Thon: Wiki Community Malta
Friday 6 March, 5pm - 8pm
Saturday 7 March, 10am - 4pm
Curator’s Tour: Margerita Pulè
Sunday 8 March 11:30am
Summary
Strangers in a Strange Land – curated by Margerita Pulè - is a multidisciplinary exhibition about being female in a world narrated by and designed for men. Artists Barumbara Collective, Etienne Farrell with Charlene Gálea, Roxman Gatt, and Letta Shtohryn show work reacting to their experiences of negotiating their lives in a male-oriented world.
The programme will start with a movement workshop for women by Barumbara Collective member Francesca Saraullo on 12 February. The Barumbara Collective themselves will perform a new immersive work at MUŻA on 14, 15, 16 February; Imagined More Than Woman will test the boundaries which our identities place on us, and will redefine the contours of a cultural space through a female gaze. Roxman Gatt will perform her work My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn on 28, 29 February – her sculptures and paintings will also be on show throughout the exhibition. A collaboration between Etienne Farrell and Charlene Gálea will bear fruit with JIEN - a series of portraits of Charlene herself exploring authorities and insincerities as well as human vulnerabilities. Media artist and researcher Letta Shtohryn has also been commissioned to create a new work; * "woman", "holding". an Altar to Algorithmic Bias is based on her research into the ingrained biases which is present in existing algorithms.
Alongside the exhibition and performances, Wiki Community Malta will hold a Wikipedia Workshops and Edit-a-thons on 6 and 7 March. A conversation with artists Etienne Farrell, Charlene Galea, and Letta Shtohryn about their work will take place on 21 February, while the curator will speak about the exhibition on 23 February and 8 March.
The project is supported by Arts Council Malta’s Malta Arts Fund - Project Support Grant, as well as Express Trailers and Soroptimist International Malta.
Strangers in a Strange Land – curated by Margerita Pulè - is a multidisciplinary exhibition about being female in a world narrated by and designed for men. Artists Barumbara Collective, Etienne Farrell with Charlene Gálea, Roxman Gatt, and Letta Shtohryn show work reacting to their experiences of negotiating their lives in a male-oriented world.
The programme will start with a movement workshop for women by Barumbara Collective member Francesca Saraullo on 12 February. The Barumbara Collective themselves will perform a new immersive work at MUŻA on 14, 15, 16 February; Imagined More Than Woman will test the boundaries which our identities place on us, and will redefine the contours of a cultural space through a female gaze. Roxman Gatt will perform her work My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn on 28, 29 February – her sculptures and paintings will also be on show throughout the exhibition. A collaboration between Etienne Farrell and Charlene Gálea will bear fruit with JIEN - a series of portraits of Charlene herself exploring authorities and insincerities as well as human vulnerabilities. Media artist and researcher Letta Shtohryn has also been commissioned to create a new work; * "woman", "holding". an Altar to Algorithmic Bias is based on her research into the ingrained biases which is present in existing algorithms.
Alongside the exhibition and performances, Wiki Community Malta will hold a Wikipedia Workshops and Edit-a-thons on 6 and 7 March. A conversation with artists Etienne Farrell, Charlene Galea, and Letta Shtohryn about their work will take place on 21 February, while the curator will speak about the exhibition on 23 February and 8 March.
The project is supported by Arts Council Malta’s Malta Arts Fund - Project Support Grant, as well as Express Trailers and Soroptimist International Malta.
Curatorial Note
It may seem tiresome and even a bit passé to again be confronted with a feminist argument – it’s easy to think that with gender quotas and equal rights, feminism has lost its validity. Sadly though, the message that gender inequality still exists bears repeating; yes, generations of feminists have inched us closer to equal rights, but the world’s default is still very much one rooted in a patriarchal reality.
Indeed, it would be over-simplistic to insist upon a male-female binary divide and thus reinforce stereotypes of masculine and feminine behaviour. A fluidity of genders and identities now allows for a greater freedom of behaviour and opportunities than ever before. However, it would be equally disingenuous to pretend that women are not still experiencing discrimination and micro-bigotries on a daily basis – prejudices that even the most enlightened (but automatically privileged) man may not be aware of. Make no mistake; the thousand tiny cuts of chauvinism – the expectations of how women should behave and what men are entitled to - are still very much ingrained in our societies.
That is the context for this project; to attempt to unravel some of the gender-based values that exist around us. Strangers in a Strange Land refers to the hundreds of negotiations that women make as part of their daily lives – often without even being conscious of them – to navigate in a context where the default is almost without exception a male version of the world. This can range from small irritations like air-conditioners being set too cold for women, to more significant inequalities like inbuilt algorithmic prejudices, medical misdiagnoses or a misrepresentation of sexual violence against women.
The name of the exhibition refers to a Biblical passage where Moses names his firstborn son Gershom, or ‘stranger’ in reference to the Exodus, because he himself had been ‘a stranger in a strange land’. It is also the title of a science-fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a human born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, who comes to Earth in early adulthood.
What can we make of these stories? [Apart, of course, from the maleness of their protagonists]. Is it an exaggeration to claim that women are, like Gershom’s name, trapped in a perpetual exodus, never arriving, and never fully at home? Or that they are surrounded by an alien world, raised on Mars, and unable to cope with the cultures and concepts of the planet Earth?
Take even the proud sub-title of the city of Valletta, in which the exhibition takes place; a city ‘built by gentlemen for gentlemen’. If the city if built for gentlemen, what should the women do? Act like gentlemen in order to ‘fit it?’ Or restrict themselves to the edges of the peninsula, so as not to appear out of place. These arguments may seem facetious, but actually they serve as a useful metaphor for women’s perpetual necessary state of ‘clawing back’ their identity, rights and existence from society’s imbalanced status quo.
The works in this exhibition are at once personal and political, having been developed through research, and through the personal experiences of the artists themselves. Some diverge from the feminist standpoint to encompass many other elements of identity, authority and interaction, seeing the grey areas between the male-bad female-good dichotomy. Others are much more direct – militant almost – in their approach; others are based on hard facts and empirical data gathered by the artist.
The divergence of work and discipline reflects the balance that we – as women – attempt to strike daily. Walking the streets of a world built by and for gentlemen, we also must negotiate between the personal and the political, as we traverse broad interactions and intimacies alike.
Margerita Pulè
It may seem tiresome and even a bit passé to again be confronted with a feminist argument – it’s easy to think that with gender quotas and equal rights, feminism has lost its validity. Sadly though, the message that gender inequality still exists bears repeating; yes, generations of feminists have inched us closer to equal rights, but the world’s default is still very much one rooted in a patriarchal reality.
Indeed, it would be over-simplistic to insist upon a male-female binary divide and thus reinforce stereotypes of masculine and feminine behaviour. A fluidity of genders and identities now allows for a greater freedom of behaviour and opportunities than ever before. However, it would be equally disingenuous to pretend that women are not still experiencing discrimination and micro-bigotries on a daily basis – prejudices that even the most enlightened (but automatically privileged) man may not be aware of. Make no mistake; the thousand tiny cuts of chauvinism – the expectations of how women should behave and what men are entitled to - are still very much ingrained in our societies.
That is the context for this project; to attempt to unravel some of the gender-based values that exist around us. Strangers in a Strange Land refers to the hundreds of negotiations that women make as part of their daily lives – often without even being conscious of them – to navigate in a context where the default is almost without exception a male version of the world. This can range from small irritations like air-conditioners being set too cold for women, to more significant inequalities like inbuilt algorithmic prejudices, medical misdiagnoses or a misrepresentation of sexual violence against women.
The name of the exhibition refers to a Biblical passage where Moses names his firstborn son Gershom, or ‘stranger’ in reference to the Exodus, because he himself had been ‘a stranger in a strange land’. It is also the title of a science-fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a human born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, who comes to Earth in early adulthood.
What can we make of these stories? [Apart, of course, from the maleness of their protagonists]. Is it an exaggeration to claim that women are, like Gershom’s name, trapped in a perpetual exodus, never arriving, and never fully at home? Or that they are surrounded by an alien world, raised on Mars, and unable to cope with the cultures and concepts of the planet Earth?
Take even the proud sub-title of the city of Valletta, in which the exhibition takes place; a city ‘built by gentlemen for gentlemen’. If the city if built for gentlemen, what should the women do? Act like gentlemen in order to ‘fit it?’ Or restrict themselves to the edges of the peninsula, so as not to appear out of place. These arguments may seem facetious, but actually they serve as a useful metaphor for women’s perpetual necessary state of ‘clawing back’ their identity, rights and existence from society’s imbalanced status quo.
The works in this exhibition are at once personal and political, having been developed through research, and through the personal experiences of the artists themselves. Some diverge from the feminist standpoint to encompass many other elements of identity, authority and interaction, seeing the grey areas between the male-bad female-good dichotomy. Others are much more direct – militant almost – in their approach; others are based on hard facts and empirical data gathered by the artist.
The divergence of work and discipline reflects the balance that we – as women – attempt to strike daily. Walking the streets of a world built by and for gentlemen, we also must negotiate between the personal and the political, as we traverse broad interactions and intimacies alike.
Margerita Pulè
Art+Feminism
Art+Feminism is an annual worldwide edit-a-thon to add content to Wikipedia about women artists. Now in its third year in Malta, this edition features a series of curated exhibitions across three sites presenting new works by both established and emerging artists. This initiative is made possible through an ongoing collaboration between Spazju Kreattiv, Wikimedia Community Malta, the M3P Foundation, Gabriel Caruana Foundation and Unfinished Art Space.
More info here.
Art+Feminism Exhibitions
Art+Feminism at Spazju Kreattiv from 7 February to 5 April, Space A & Space B, Spazju Kreattiv
Jean Zaleski Centenary Celebration from 5 March to 10 May, Atrium Approach and Meditation Area, Spazju Kreattiv
Privat: The Natural Body as Fiction from 8 to 25 March, The Mill, Birkirkara
Art+Feminism is an annual worldwide edit-a-thon to add content to Wikipedia about women artists. Now in its third year in Malta, this edition features a series of curated exhibitions across three sites presenting new works by both established and emerging artists. This initiative is made possible through an ongoing collaboration between Spazju Kreattiv, Wikimedia Community Malta, the M3P Foundation, Gabriel Caruana Foundation and Unfinished Art Space.
More info here.
Art+Feminism Exhibitions
Art+Feminism at Spazju Kreattiv from 7 February to 5 April, Space A & Space B, Spazju Kreattiv
Jean Zaleski Centenary Celebration from 5 March to 10 May, Atrium Approach and Meditation Area, Spazju Kreattiv
Privat: The Natural Body as Fiction from 8 to 25 March, The Mill, Birkirkara
