Some thoughts on the role of women in the visual arts: American artist Barbara Kruger makes the cover of W magazine’s Art issue, via the famous-for-nothing Kim Kardashian. The opening line of the article goes like this: “Kim Kardashian can’t sing, act, or dance, but she’s found the role of a lifetime in the fine art of playing herself.”

Image: highsnobiety.com

Meanwhile, a new feminist art documentary is about to come out this fall. It’s called !Women Art Revolution, and it’s by artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson. Watch the trailer HERE.

Image: theactivistwriter.com

The film tracks the Feminist art movement from its beginnings in the 1960s to the political activism of the 1970s, and the exhibitions and performances that came out of it. I think t looks great.

Also, I’ve recently discovered some new Canadian women artists (on the advice of one of my favorite Canadian artists, Gunilla Josephson) One is the young artist Jenn E. Norton, whose whimsical videos and installations appear to be very well thought out and produced, and whose work I’m looking forward to seeing more of.

An image from Jenn E Norton’s interactive piece Les Soeurs du 21e ciècle/21st Century Fox Sisters, 2010. Image: jennenorton.com

Interestingly, in stark contrast to Kim Kardashian’s stunning celebrity, Norton’s piece Les Soeurs du 21e ciècle/21st Century Fox Sisters, is an interactive work about the Fox sisters, two famed mediums of the 19th century. Though they became internationally known, they died penniless.

I’ve recently been reading a book, called Technologies of Intuition, edited by Jennifer Fisher, about (female) “artists who employ the material culture of intuition: the Ouija board, a deck of cards, crystal balls and such.”

Check out Norton’s website, HERE.

A still from Bubble, a performance by Claudia Wittmann. Image: ccca.ca

Last but not least is another recent discovery – the Swiss-born Toronto performance and Butoh artist Claudia Wittmann, whose residency with Doug Tielli at Somewhere There in Toronto is very interestingly documented on her website, HERE.

I’m also looking forward to seeing Wittmann in action at a performance called 24 h of butoh and it is not butoh, November 12 – 13 at Cinecycle, in Toronto.

Maybe I’ll see you there? For more info, please click HERE.