Art World
Women Change the World in Artist’s Tributes to Female Activists Including Emma Sulkowicz
Are women secretly running the show?
Sarah Cascone
Share This Article
Do girls run the world, as Beyoncé would have us believe? One artist’s project, at least, is focused on how they are changing it.
Since 2012, Peruvian artist María María Acha-Kutscher has been paying tribute to female activists in “Indignadas (Outraged Women),” a series of illustrations capturing women’s involvement in public protests.
“The aim of the Indignadas series is to make women’s efforts more visible and place women at the center of these social struggles,” reads a statement on the artist’s website. She aims to create “a memory bank that shows future generations that social changes throughout history were made by women and men together.”
Acha-Kutscher’s work lionizes women in a number of movements, from Occupy Wall Street to protests against sexual violence on college campuses. One calls attention to Mattress Performance: Carry That Weight, Emma Sulkowicz’s senior thesis project at New York’s Columbia University. Sulkowicz carries a mattress around campus to protest the school’s response to her allegation of rape against a fellow-student (see Columbia Student’s Performance Art Catalyzes a Full-Fledged Protest Movement).
The artist has also illustrated female protesters responding to the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York (see After Ferguson, a New Protest Culture’s Challenge to Art); Boko Haram’s kidnapping of 230 Nigerian school girls; the abduction of students in Mexico; and the terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The images are available for use under a Creative Commons license.
Article topics
