Feminism and Folk Art offers a refreshingly delightful read of women artists working in different parts of the world, specifically, in Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil. The book not only provides the history of folk art in these countries, but, more importantly, brings women from their hidden silences or “obscurity” into the limelight. For, by the very act of documenting their herstories in relation to their artistic endeavors, they become a vivid and viable part of posterity.
The author makes painstaking effort to discuss what folk art is generally, and what it is in each of the selected countries. This background information is helpful as she then delves into the subject of women and their art, bringing out important observations in the process. Making a distinction between folk art and crafts, and connecting folk art to a community’s economy and to cultural identity, the book discusses the central position gender occupies in all these arenas. Deconstructing the common description of folk art as the “art of the people,” the author adopts a feminist approach, not as a political tool but rather as a method to challenge the assertion that folk art is “essentially a male art” (3).
Unlike many feminist texts that restrict the use of the term to women only, thereby foreclosing the exploration of other forms of oppression, Feminism and Folk Art makes a case for using the intersectional feminist approach judiciously. This approach allows one to thoroughly analyze the different layers involved in all forms of oppression, discrimination, and inequality in order to gain a better grasp of how these play out in the arts. A number of instances are given. Through the intersectional feminist approach, the reader is shown that folk art has never been critiqued from the feminist angle, for folk art is generally regarded as male art, as attested to by the number of male-created art works in some museums in Mexico and Brazil. The application of feminism to folk art reveals how men and women interact with ordinary materials to produce distinct art objects. It also throws open a window on the class divisions and gendered myths at play in the creative process. Importantly too, the intersectional feminist approach recognizes that folk art is usually regarded as low art, an art carried out by people on the lowest rung of the social order, and within this social class women are not seen to be involved in the “artistic processes of creation, distribution, and consumption” (5).
The adoption of the feminist approach, therefore, allows the researcher to observe the different ways male and female artists create, view, and consume art works; how the art works of male and female artists are regarded and appreciated; and how male and female artists represent women in their art works. This methodology also exposes the hidden presence of women artists and their significant contributions to the arts through the ages; it uncovers the layers of gendered social hierarchies and their duplicity in the images created in art works; and it identifies the causes of women’s absence in the creative milieu and suggests ways to address these factors so that, unhindered, women’s creativity can further soar.
We now look at the case studies discussed in the book. In Mexico, the author interviewed a number of female artists of polychromatic clay figures, many of whom are widowed or separated from their spouses. The author makes some important observations on the works of these female artists, which differs from those of their male counterparts. Only two will be mentioned here. The first is the way these women artists represent nudity in their works; their nude female figures have small breasts and innocent expressions, unlike those of the male artists whose nude female figures exhibit rather large body parts. The second observation is that the women artists pay more attention to detail. Generally, this folk art represents a mixture of both the old and the new, a traditional art infused with features that echo contemporary Mexican society. In New Zealand, the author focuses her attention on Maori women and the weaving of baskets. Again, many of the women she encountered in this country are widows or separated from their spouses, and more importantly, as in Mexico, they were taught the art by other women, sometimes their mothers, grandmothers, or mothers-in-law. Their baskets evidence the confluence of tradition and modernity. Interestingly, both male and female artists refuse the label “folk art” to describe their creative works.
The third chapter, on women artists in Japan, is co-authored with the Japanese writer, Kanae Omura. The popular folk art covered is Hagoita, decorated paddles, which involve much skill and precision in their creation. As in the other case studies in the book, the authors here offer observations that are specific to this community but that also find resonance in the other countries discussed in the book. In Japan, the invisibility of women is a reflection of the invisible nature of women’s domestic chores, so vital to the running of the home yet so unappreciated. Women remain in the background, rarely signing their art works, and they must divide their time caring for children or aged relatives. The invisibility of work by women, despite the skill that goes into producing decorative paddles, reflects their general absence in accounts of folk art.
The folk art in Brazil treated in this book revolves around three art objects: the bumba-meu-boi, art pieces that depict images of oxen with bells around their necks; the guinea fowl motif; and art with the image of the mythical social bandit, Lampião, and his wife. These art pieces are usually on fabric or canvas, and many women are active in this genre of art. As in the case of Mexico, the author observes here the proliferation of artist cooperatives that provide a cover of legality and security to their profession. For the most popular of these, the Abayomi Project, made up of a group of Black women who create decorative Black blank-face rag dolls, this artistic creation provides the opportunity for the women to project positive images of Black women.
The conclusion builds on some of the findings identified in the introductory section of the book. Apart from the adoption of a feminist methodology to reassess the social position of women in the folk arts, thereby giving them and the researcher the ability to change it for the better, another finding is that the creativity of women artists is enriched through the experience of motherhood. Many of their art pieces depict women involved in different activities; many are also self-portraits, which show women’s acceptance of their bodies. Therefore, the feminist approach has helped to reveal that motherhood, rather than being an impediment to the creative skill of the female artist, has instead provided much strength and much material to draw from.
There are a few drawbacks in the book. One of these is the issue of widowhood. For a book that features a large number of women artists who are widows, only a very short section, aptly titled “Widowhood: The Ideal State for Women?” (pages 33 – 36), discusses this issue, and only one widow, the Mexican artist Leonila Lucrecia Ramos Miranda, is the focus of attention. Another drawback is the lack of quality in the pictures, though this is understandable due to issues of cost. How alive and real the pictures would have been if they had been in color! The black-and-white prints do not allow the reader to appreciate the beauty and the attention to detail put into each work.
Feminism and Folk Art: Case Studies in Mexico, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil is a very interesting and detailed book about the place and role of women folk artists in four geographical locations, situated in four countries and on three continents. The plurality of settings and experiences further adds to the importance of this book as a contribution to the discussion of women’s art from a feminist perspective.
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[Review length: 1326 words • Review posted on October 1, 2020]