Since International Women's Day 2021, we have been researching and sharing the work of women creatives from all around the world. The intention of this is to directly challenge the status quo in the art world, which gives preferential treatment to men. We can create change by celebrating and exposing the the work of women creatives, thereby elevating visibility for commercial projects and commissions.
It's been just over a year now since we started showcasing different artists from around the world. Seeing as it is Women's History Month 2022, we decided to collect all the pieces we have shared in one place. So here you are, enjoy!
Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze
A Nigerian-born artist, Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze was raised in the United Kingdom and now lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. In her mixed-media drawings she meditates on hybridity and displacement - creating nonlinear narratives and alien beings inhabiting foreign landscapes.
Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald, a painter, was raised in Columbus and is currently living and working in Baltimore. Her portrait-based work is autobiographical and places real people in imaginary places.
Andrea Bowers
Andrea Bowers is an LA Based, American multi-media artist - she works in video, sculpture, etc. Key themes she explores in her works are around women's’ and workers’ rights to climate change and immigration.
Emma Kohlmann
Emma Kohlmann is an American artist based in Massachusetts. Her primary focus is usually in working with ink and watercolor. Kohlmann also publishes her own artist’s books, zines and made various record covers for music labels. Her drawings and paintings feature various creatures, plants and human figures - the fantastical figures reminding us of mythological narratives and dreamscapes.
Hayv Kahraman
Hayv Kahraman is a Kurdish-American artist who lives and works in LA. Her works reflect the controversial issues of gender, specifically concerning female identity in relation to her experiences as a refugee, and all issues that plague her home country of Iraq.
Jordan Casteel
Jordan Casteel is an American figurative painter who lives and works in New York. She's known for first photographing people she's encountered in life and then paints them with exaggerated textured in the texture of their skin and clothing, almost similar to the dynamism of Baroque paintings.
Liza Lou
Liza Lou is an American artist who works in LA and Durban, South Africa. She is known for her use of glass beads in her practice - wanting to break the stigma of beads being associated with craft, by showing that the material can be associated with fine art. In her studio in Durban, Liza Lou employs over 25 women and men, breathing life into a struggling, poverty infiltrated community.
Hilary Pecis
Hilary Pecis lives and works in LA. Pecis is known for creating paintings of interiors, still life and landscapes in bright colours. Her works are full of objects, intruding many vibrant colours and textures.
Farah Atassi
Farah Atassi is a Belgian Artist who lives and works in Paris. She's known for creating works made of vibrantly coloured geometric shapes that play with perspective. Her paintings mix textile patterns and motley mosaics, referencing Modernism and Folk Art in equal measure.
Iona Rozeal Brown
Iona Rozeal Brown is a contemporary American painter best known for her use of traditional ukiyo-e print techniques to meld Japanese folklore, geisha, kabuki, and samurai imagery with hip-hop references and African-American culture. It is the vibrancy of her paintings and the characters within them that make them so captivating.
Wendy Red Star
Wendy Red Star's work is extremely self aware - staring down the stereotypes placed on Native women by imperialist histories and ignorant presents. Her work, spanning photography, collage, textile, and film, draws on her experience as a member of the Crow Nation and the playfulness of pop art. Red Star often incorporates herself into her photography, including herself and her daughter in tongue-in-cheek posed portraits, annotating photographs and using personal family photographs in multi-colour quilts.
This Women's History Month (and beyond!) we encourage you to take the time to seek out and learn about some of the incredible women artists who've been placed at a disadvantage by the art world.
Be vocal and active: When you visit an exhibition with few or no women, leave a comment or tell someone at the space that you would like to see more women represented. If you can, buy a work of art by a woman artist or ask your local museum or art space to carry products by women designers in their shops. Even if you can't buy a piece of art, following woman artists on social media shows support.