- Experiencing the Tate Modern with Alex Ahuja (who is outwardly spoken about how much he dislikes modern art).
- Experiencing one of the best food experiences and one of the worst (Wagamama’s catered directly to gluten allergies and Five Guys just completely forgot to make my food).
- Going to St. Paul’s Cathedral (I stayed for their Eucharist and they had a female priest!)
- Found an Ice Lolly (think an icee pop or just a popsicle, that’s the closest you’re going to get to a snow cone around these parts because they don’t exist from what research I’ve gathered).
- I ate a Five Guys meal, cold at Midsummer.
- I accidentally bumped into the person behind me at Midsummer and they scoffed at me.
- The cast of Midsummer was predominantly female, and they doubled A TON! Even Eugueus was a woman!
- I found the best Caesar Salad that I have had so far and it was just in the downstairs hotel restaurant…score!
- We had a board game night.
- Candace, Emily, and I found the Republic of Texas Plaque (the last remaining piece of the independent envoy because they forgot to pay rent in London).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Tate Modern Museum (at least the two pieces of art I’m going to be focusing on) had an underlying theme of feminism and female empowerment for me. Both of these activities reminded me that even though it can suck to be a female in the arts (because oh boy can it really suck) we have got to stake our ground and let our voices be heard.
Guerrilla Girls is an exhibit at Tate Modern that focused on the inclusion of artwork created by female’s and how there is not only a lack of this art in museums but also a lack overall and also how many artists try to conceal or change their identity to have their artwork even seen. Guerrilla Girls, is an activist group that remains anonymous but brings this message to light through rallies, producing feminism center work in all forms, and an overall support of under represented artists. These activist groups remain anonymous by wearing Gorilla masks, hence the name Guerrilla Girls. The piece of work that really got me that was in their exhibition was the advantages of being a woman artist. It listed a few reasons why it could be better, my favorites were, “Working without the pressure of success. Being reassured that whatever kind of art you create will be labeled feminine. Seeing your ideas live on in the works of others.” This gave me a sense of hope and internal fire that as a female artist and creator that the baby steps that I am making will make a difference one day, hopefully in the near future. Another great point that Guerrilla Girls make is that “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.” That really made me think about all of the artwork that we do see, that is just simply naked women captured by the male gaze. There was one other piece of art at Tate, called Valentine. It is a representation of the female silhouette, it is naked, but it has a zipper of clothing (which is an astronaut suit) to reveal her naked body). This is to tell the story of Valentine Tereshka, the first woman in space during the US vs. Soviet Union space race. And this artwork was created by a female. I initially loved this piece of art because the nudity was simple and in my mind throughout. But after seeing the Guerrilla Girls exhibit it made me think “Was this somewhat feminist piece of art only accepted into this museum because it showed female nudity?” It truly made me rethink what I consider to be praising and destroying the idea of the feminine presence in art.
Midsummer and Guerilla Girls go hand in hand in my opinion as females dominated that stage. It gave a new fresh light to Midsummer as even the masculine characters had more feminine attributes or initially you were sure if the actor was male identifying or not. The doubling of the characters, allowed for the females to male the “male” roles that Shakespeare had originally written, allowing for this production to be such a fun feminist, queer, gender bending, rule-breaking experience. It made me want to make more art just like this and have as many women on stage as possible because it is so important in my opinion, for female artists to see people they can identify with doing what they want to do. And each and every one of us on this trip, who identify as female, could feel a pull to not only just an actor but also characters because there were more opportunities for us to. The female representation is just touching on the amount of representation that the Globe was able to have present on their stage, they covered many minority groups and it was moving and emotional to see. This is the art I want to be creating and to be apart of.
Theatre in London U of A 