The years of apartheid brought not only legislated racism to South Africa, it also excluded people—particularly creative people—from access to the currents that were motivating and feeding the rest of the creative world. Feminism, Post-Modernism, Happenings, Performance Art were all strategies for art making that came to dynamic and active life between the 1950s and…

Bangladesh Art: A Collection of Contemporary Paintings. Published by the by  the Society for the Promotion of Bangladeshi Art, Dhaka, 2003. At 327 thick, around- folio size pages, Bangladesh Art: A Collection of Contemporary Paintings is a big book. But the dimensions of the book are fully functional: this is an ambitious work and its…

Not all that long ago art exhibitions were seasonal affairs, adding colour to the cool, dry months. Not any more. It may be blistering summer or the wet and musty monsoon or muggy post-monsoon season, but Dhaka’s art galleries, despite their steadily increasing number, are never short on bookings. This means, of course, that artists…

Pinaree Sanpitak’s works do not amount to a grand gesture or an epic of feminist statement in the 21st century. They constitute the statement of a woman who speaks about her own time and space and expresses herself freely about her situation, sensibility and sensuality through her works of art. Pinaree is an example of…

Suphala is a slight woman, almost elfin, who is transformed when she gets behind a pair of the skin-covered hand drums, one a little larger than the other, that make up a tabla player’s precision instrument. North Indian classical music, though rooted in tradition, has always been open to the world. It evolved its signature…

Baerbel Dieckmann has exhibited widely in Europe and America, and won numerous prizes. Recognised as one of the most gifted of contemporary artists, she lives in Berlin and works full time as a sculptress The expressive realist sculptress Baerbel Dieckmann was born in Bielefeld, Germany, in 1961. Attending a ‘grammar school,’ she was introduced at…

Europe is far from being a homogenous block culturally or politically. It is extremely varied in the range, size and diversity of its arts communities, many with unique and divergent cultural and political histories. With the expansion of the European Union, the boundaries and characteristics of a Europe are in the process of changing dramatically…

The following is an account—inevitably one of many possible—of women artists in Australia over recent years.  In fact it is an account of the last 25 years but from a perspective and memory mostly informed by the last decade. Most of the artists I will treat are well-known now. A few are recent reputations.  One…

Korean women artists now invite viewers to share their experiences through explorations of the consequences of having to conform to Confucian norms. This effort reflects a tension within them and a space where conflicting ideologies have to be  reconciled in order to function in a society that is intolerant of differences Looking at today’s women…

A survey of eight Arab women artists, whose concerns, media and techniques, viewpoints, varied experiences, and observations are representative of the current  beliefs existent amongst female artists of the contemporary Arab art scene To say that women artists are different from men artists opens up a polemic that arguably can never be resolved. For isn’t…