The Guerilla Girls share their take on sexism, racism, and corruption in the art world, and how they fight back with “creative complaining”

It was a great honor to welcome two of the Guerrilla Girls, “Frida Kahlo” and “Käthe Kollwitz,” to this episode of the Raw and Radical Women in the Arts podcast.

The Guerilla Girls group is made up of anonymous feminist activist artists, who wear gorilla masks and adopt the names of famous women artists as pseudonyms so that public attention remains on the work they do, rather than on their identities.

For more information on our guests and this episode, please visit rawradical.com

Guerrilla Girls | Raw and Radical Women in the Arts

Spanish curator, art historian, writer and currently the director of the Art Gender Nature Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Chus Martinez talks about reimagining the exhibition public space, the transformative role of art in society and being a woman in her field of work.

It’s a pleasure to welcome Chus Martinez to the show and to listen to her enriching thoughts, opinions, and experiences as a woman in the very pit of the artworld. She talks about how she reimagines and innovates the exhibition space as a curator, art’s powerful impact in driving social change, and being a woman in the art world.

We also discuss the mindset of artists working collaboratively versus this false idea of “the genius”, the experience of being immersed in the art education world, and the gradual coming back of man into cohabitation with nature.


Conversation Highlights:

Reimagining how to organize exhibitions
The impact of art on society
The gradual reconnection of man with nature
Chus’s experience being in the world of art education
Being a woman, and also a mother in the art world

A conversation with Chus Martinez

Our unique guest in this episode is Turkish artist Mimiko Türkkan. She creates artwork such as photography series, books and videos with a focus on gender roles and socially constructed identities.

She shares with us her artistic process in coming up with ideas, forming a narrative and going through a project. We focus particularly on her most recent creative endeavour, resulting in “Energy Watery Incantations” showing now in the Galerie Analix Forever in Geneva, to which we get to listen to an excerpt.

She investigates her fears, in relation to ‘the flow’, her creative process and her relation to the world. With traveling and physical activity playing a major role in her artistic process, she gives us a glimpse into the making of “Energy Watery Incantations.” She also gives her piece about being a woman in the arts and gender equality in Turkey.

We also welcome Barbara Polla, owner of the Galerie Analix Forever, adding to the subject of the show ‘Water Paintings’, having had the opportunity to follow Mimiko throughout her creation.


Conversation Highlights:

- Mimiko’s artistic process where traveling and physical activity have an important place

- “Energy Watery Incantations”, her relation with fear and the flow 

- Her thoughts on female identity, gender equality and being a woman in the arts in Turkey

To learn more about Mimiko and this episode, visit our website rawradical.com

This podcast is supported by Pro Helvetia The swiss arts council,  The Republic and Canton of Geneva, and the City of Lancy in Switzerland. We thank them for their support to culture, women and the arts.

Mimiko Türkkan | Raw and Radical Women in the Arts Podcast

Lyz Parayzo, a Brazilian artist who works sculptures, live performances and audiovisual pieces, is with us on the show recorded from the gallery Espace L in Geneva, where there’s an exhibition called “PornoChic”. It was inspired by one of the tale of the book of the “Erotic Tales” by the Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst. 
 
In this episode, we talk about the feminine performative, gender, its fluidity and its place in the art world that sometimes remains conservative. Through her work, like sharply cut sculptures representing ‘jewelry as self defense’, she aims to create the aforementioned debate, raising questions on desire and violence and its relation to the feminine performative. 
 
She shares how her personal experiences have heavily influenced her art, along with external inspiration through writers, artists and thinkers such as Lygia Clark, Hilda Hilst, Hudinilson Junior, Kubra Khademi, Paul Preciado and Annie Sprinkle.
 
Her work is provocative, and affronting to some. Some of it has once been censored. But her art, as her body - which she draws from for her creations - takes a political stance, as the LGBT community still suffers from hate crimes, phobia and rejection. 

Conversation Highlights: 

- Lyz’ “Guerilla Plans”: claiming art spaces for her art

- Her series: “Bellic Prosthesis”, sculptures of ‘jewelries for self-defense’ 

- Desire and violence, gender and identity

To learn more about Lyz and this episode, visit our website rawradical.com

This podcast is supported by Pro Helvetia The swiss arts council, The Republic and Canton of Geneva, and the City of Lancy in Switzerland. We thank them for their support to culture, women and the arts.

Lyz Parayzo | Raw and Radical Women in the Arts Podcast

Raw and Radical is an inspirational movement, resource, and community for women who want to be creative and live a creative life, but who feel alone and struggle to claim the time and space they need to fully realize their potential. 

Through conversations with creative and artistic women who are striving to live bold, authentic, creatively-fulfilling lives, I explore the themes of identity, vulnerability, authenticity, loneliness, alienation, discrimination, inspiration, empowerment, and social change. These themes are reinforced through a growing online community and the Raw and Radical product line offered through the website.

As a young career-oriented woman and later as a mother, I struggled to find time to make art and be the artist I knew I was supposed to be. During that time, I often wished that I had a “biography in the making” to reference—a resource that wasn’t just a retrospective of someone’s artistic success, but that delved deeply into the struggles and challenges they faced as creative women and maintaining a creative practice.

The Raw and Radical platform is that present-day biography, exploring the raw underbelly of what it means to be a woman in the arts, connecting women through their “lowlight” instead of “highlight” reels so that they can live more authentically, boldly, and unapologetically, stepping into their creative power and becoming a force for personal, community, and global change.

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