Catalogue What if Women Ruled the World?

Welcome to the exhibition What if Women Ruled the World?

A new and feminine era is dawning. According to Mayan and Aztec predictions, we are entering a period in which the feminine will be dominant. The current transition period is both masculine and feminine, but after many male cycles, the following solar cycle will be female.

What would the world be like if femininity were to have the upper hand? What if Women Ruled the World? is a response to an emancipation that has been underway for some time, and shows that the change is not necessarily a revolt against masculinity, but rather an increasing visibility of all things feminine, based on their individual qualities. The group exhibition examines being female and femininity, in both men and women, and in doing so offers a reflection on intersectional feminism.

Through performances, installations, projections, murals and film, the artists explore a more female-oriented world. Obscured femininity, in both males and females, now appears to be nearing the surface, as if it had been hesitant, and had long curbed its expression whilst awaiting external recognition. More outspoken and self-assured, femininity is changing its own image (and perception), and expanding its boundaries.

The title What if Women Ruled the World? comes from Yael Bartana’s multi-year project inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, in which white males discuss a nuclear war. What would be the results of a discussion in which women dominated the political arena? Yael Bartana developed her interdisciplinary project as an experimental and activist forum to examine alternatives to a world dominated by men. She brought together over 60 internationally renowned women - defence consultants, soldiers, peace activists, politicians and leading thinkers - to explore new routes as an alternative to male discourse.

Celebrating femininity goes hand-in-hand with imaginations of temptation, longing, sensuality, role-play and the exploration of being female versus being male in relation to our social frameworks. Masculinity cannot be placed diametrically opposite to femininity, as can black to white. Each needs the other, and there appears to be no clear delineation of where one starts and the other ends. They flow into each other, as it were, as in an alchemistic marriage between man and woman.

Enjoy!
Imke Ruigrok