The male perspective: Curating an exhibition on feminism as a man

Being one of only two men in 22 Curators I find myself in an unusual position. The position of whether or not it was right for me to influence the outcome of an exhibition that discusses feminist issues.

When the theme of absence and presence of women was first proposed I admit I was a little apprehensive, not because simply I’m a man, but because I didn’t feel I could discuss feminist issues properly having not experienced the struggles women face.

Looking through the longlist of 45 artworks that were made available to us it soon became apparent that there was a disproportionate ratio of men to women artists. A large portion of the collection being made up by one artist in particular, Antoni Tapies. Yet again I found myself concerned with our new theme.

However, as we researched more about each of the individual artworks, stripping away our longlist to a much more manageable short list of 13 artworks, it became obvious that despite the limitations of the collection we had available to us we could still use these to discuss important points, especially in relation to our sub-themes “Presence, absence, and misrepresentation” and “Influential women”.

Throughout the whole process of creating this exhibition; from the initial look at the artworks and the space we would be working in, to its realisation within the space, my thoughts have kept returning to a few questions I’ve had to ask myself.

Most of these questions are along the lines of: “Am I qualified, as a man, to create an exhibition designed to create a dialogue and talk about issues women have, and still do, face both as artists and as women in general?”

I am a man, and as a man I have never had to deal with any of the issues that many women have to face, which leaves me with more questions than answers.

I have struggled to write this blog post, partially because of my innate ability to procrastinate to the extreme, but also because I haven’t exactly known what to write. It’s hard to write about something you’re not sure about, and harder still to write about something you were uncertain about doing, but did anyway.

I still don’t know whether the answer is yes or no, I don’t know really if anyone could say either way.

However I do enjoy seeing the reactions of people viewing the exhibition, talking to people throughout the whole process, basically anyone who has had anything to do with this exhibition, and, most important thing to me I think; the dialogue this has created which you can see evidenced in the antechamber with the conversations naturally springing up.

This exhibition has had an impact on people, and that’s just fantastic.