A few weeks ago we were asked to write a reflective textual response to a piece of artwork within the gallery that stood out to us and inspired interest. One piece that particularly stood out to me was Austin Garland’s work of The Woman in a Kimono. The artwork instantly sparked a connection with domestic violence and how the kimono is used as a cover up of her cuts and bruises. Once I had written the piece, I came back together with my group, who had also explored the women in art. This made it all the more easier to link and perform our pieces of writing together in an attempt to focus on the perception of women in the gallery. We decided to perform our piece in the feminism room itself, (Gallery 4) as there were many paintings by Henry Matisse in this room that explored and exploited the female body through appearance, and questioned our previous expectations of women. By performing in a room full of nude women our texts made it even more evident that we were in fact there speaking on behalf of them, as Charles Garoian quotes ‘by putting visual images, into words they enable artworks to speak’ (Garoian, 2001), giving us the opportunity to capture our audience even more through a claustrophobic and dominating space where feminism is the only subject displayed.
It made it ever more prominent to me how important spectators are in museum and gallery spaces, as they add the hidden content/the colour to artefacts and artworks by conjoining their own memories and cultural histories, with the stories already existing, through listening to the artwork and seeing past the picture/object. ‘In this dialogical process, both the museum and viewer “give ear” and “give voice” to each other’ (Garoian, 2001), this in turn allows the ‘viewers to transform themselves in the museum culture, to create an identity that is based on their respective cultural perspectives’ (Garoian, 2001). As stories are created and imagined by each spectator we begin to divert from the pre-existing historical context in attempt to ‘“write” on the body of history, to contribute to history that would otherwise remain silent’ (Garoian, 2001).
Works Cited
Garoian, R.C. (2001) Performing the Museum. Studies in Art Education, 42 (3) 241-244