a   p o s t m o d e r n   i n v i t a t i o n   t o   t h e   m a l e   a r t i s t

 a postmodern invitation to the male artist is a collaborative installation by we are all collective members Savannah Bortner and Petra Lee. The installation is on view at the Eugene Johnson Gallery at Bethel University from February 16-25, 2018.

in contemporary society and the art world, the worth and identity of women is devalued. the female form is taken for granted, exploited and sexualized by advertising and the media. in addition, even during second-wave feminism of the mid-twentieth century, modernist male artists such as yves klein were still oversexualizing the female body in their work, as evident in his anthropometries series.

while society may have made substantial progress today, the value of women’s bodies and rights still cause them to remain voiceless and trivialized beside their male counterparts. if a woman were to work individually on this project, she would be ignored. therefore, it is essential that we work together in order to be heard. while we are a collective of two women, we are additionally creating a larger social media project within our body of work that features other like-minded thinkers and creators and inviting them to join with our collective in solidarity.

engaging social issues is often propagandistic in nature, but is effective in the short term. in contrast, the goal of our collective is long term. we choose to adopt a more personal and meditative approach by using our bodies in a private rather than performative setting, and by extension we imprint our own histories into the work. additionally, we employ historically feminine practices and materials, such as collaboration, conversation, and collage. through the lens of a female collective, our work returns dignity to the female form while reinterpreting the way it has traditionally been presented.