Under the title “There are no women making conceptual art”, a research project is being launched by the Department of Art and Knowledge under the direction of Felix Vogel and Paula Stoica. The project examines subjectivation and gender politics in conceptual art around 1970.
The research project examines the relevance of the category “gender” in Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s. The central idea of this art movement is that the artistic idea is privileged over material execution. The project is guided by the hypothesis that, on the one hand, this new concept of the work made it possible to establish feminist practices as artistic practices and, on the other hand, that such a concept of the work was only made possible by social upheavals such as the second wave of the feminist movement. A revision of the history of conceptual art is thus proposed in that it is no longer understood as an “objective” art form, but as an opening towards questions of (female) subjectivation, forms of ideological critique and other deviant practices.
The project thus shifts the focus from merely addressing the content of gender in the visual arts to an examination of gendered practices and their critique as art. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, the project closes a gap in research, or rather it is about exploring a new methodological approach by examining whether “gender” is viable as a central category of analysis in conceptual art; on the other hand, it is intended to investigate the extent to which conceptual art as a kind of “artistic research” itself takes a theoretical stance in order to rethink gender categories.
Funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts within the research focus “Dimensions of the Category Gender - Women's and Gender Studies in Hesse”.
More information at: https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb06/institute/architektur/fachgebiete/kunst-und-wissen/forschung
