400 Women

by Ruth Barker, 24 Aug 2011

Hello,

I spent the day in Edinburgh yesterday, checking out the Art Festival. I intended to write up a wee report for you today, letting you know my highlights and disappointments but in the end I’m just going to write about one work that I thought really had an impact. Apologies to all the projects that I’m not going to mention. Apologies also for the squinty pictures from my phone.

Near the end of my day, I strolled down New Street and popped into 400 Women, at Canongate Venture. I’m going to just reprint an extract from the exhibition info sheet (by Gemma Rolls-Bentley), rather than trying to paraphrase;

“400 Women is a direct response to the abduction, rape and murder of hundreds of women in the Mexican border region of Cuidad Juarez since 1993 […]
“In early 2006 Tamsyn Challenger traveled to Mexico where she met with some of the families of murdered and missing women. She was particularly marked by meeting Consuelo Valenzuela whose daughter Julieta went missing in 2001, at the age of 17. As Challenger said goodbye, the desperate mother frantically pressed postcards into her hands. […]
“To create the body of work that comprises the installation 400 Women, Tamsyn Challenger enlisted the help of nearly 200 fellow artists over a five-year period, inviting each to produce a portrait of one of the missing or murdered girls. […] Along with the photograph that she chose for each artist she sent out a short description, often in the form of a forensic report, of each case; this contained information such as what the girl was last seen wearing or details of ho and where the murders occurred."

The effect is quite startling. Entering this temporary exhibition venue you find three floors of dilapidated rooms with paint peeling from the walls and detritus, in some cases, scattered on the floor. In these unloved spaces is painting and after painting, of uniform size and regular theme. Face after face looks out, in a wide range of style and medium, but the subjects are all young, and all female. Occasionally the lines of variously rendered eyes are interrupted by a work that shows only a name (these are ‘name portraits’ for women for whom no photograph could be found), or by a work that portrays its subject in a non-figurative way. But it is the conventional portraits that stay with you, giving faces as they do to women who have been rendered faceless by their real life obliteration.

I have to confess that I didn’t expect to like this exhibition. I thought that it seemed very literal – or even simplistic. And yet I found myself unexpectedly moved, perhaps by that very linear simplicity. The act of depiction has real significance. The care that was present in those depictions had resonance. I felt that there was something ritual here; in facemaking, in remembering, in portraying. The act became sincere, for me. And because of that I felt that it had meaning.

There were some problems with it as art, I felt. I didn’t like the venue because the impersonal, institutional nature of the architecture didn’t seem appropriate. The unloved state of the building and the lack of care that had been invested in the presentation seemed at odds with the gentleness of the gesture it contained. I didn’t like that fallen plaster hadn’t been swept up, or that paint flecks were allowed to drop to the floor. This didn’t feel like a shrine – it felt like temporary storage. Or perhaps it felt as though I was being asked to make too clunky a link: this is a disused school, now falling apart; many of the 400 Women were not women at all, but school-aged girls… Or – worse – it felt that it could be ironic somehow, like it was intended as some kind of casual ‘comment’ – this would be a real pulled punch, as the viewer needs to know that this work is being produced and presented with the care and sincerity that it deserves.
There was also a question raised in that some portraits were clearly a lot ‘better’ than others – more skilled, more powerful, more evocative. This in itself not surprising: Paula Rego is one of the contributing artists, as are Maggi Hambling and Miranda Whall – other contributors are less well known, and some are also considerably less skilled. What do we do as viewers with this inequality? This isn’t competition, but I have to be honest and say that I looked at some images for a lot longer than I looked at others (without knowing the artist’s name by the way – the individual works aren’t visibly credited on the wall).
I wasn’t keen also on the hanging of the portraits – again it felt provisional, or compromised. Overall I didn’t feel that the care of the original invitation by Challenger, or the care and deliberation of her artist-participants, was mirrored by adequate thoughtfulness and care in portrait’s works’ curation. This was a shame, as I do think that that moment of interface or encounter (effectively between the viewer and the idea) is a critical one.

But, having said that, I did find that this – problematic as aspects may be – was the stand-out work for me at this year’s Festival. Maybe it just caught me at a thoughtful moment? Hard to say, but it’s certainly the project that gave me most to think about, and has left me with the most vivid impression. Elsewhere, there was a lot of art about art. This at least was art about something.

More later,

R