Ladyfest Strives To Spur Political Action Through Art
Posted September 15, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Since the federal election call spin doctors and pundits have been trying to rouse voters with debate on the economy, leadership skills and the environment while the organizers of Ladyfest Toronto hope to inspire political action through art.
The week-long festival showcasing and supporting female and female-identified visual artists, musicians and filmmakers kicked off Sunday.
“One of the goals of the festival and organizing for us is to encourage women to become involved in politics,” Ladyfest organizer Kate Miller told CityNews.ca.
“A lot of art by women tends to be political in nature and I think that’s really wonderful to show people that your life is political and you should have fun with it and become aware and involved.”
Ladyfest is now a worldwide feminist phenomenon inspired by the inaugural event in Olympia, Washington in 2000, which featured six days of music by artists such as Cat Power and Neko Case, art shows, film screenings and workshops.
Women who attended, including Toronto musician Shannon Mitchell, were wowed by what they experienced and decided to bring the idea back to their hometowns and there are now Ladyfests that happen in cities around the globe annually, including events in Toronto, Ottawa, Baltimore, London, Bern, Bordeaux and Auckland this year.
“It started in Toronto as just a one-night benefit concert … and since then it’s grown exponentially into having workshops and visual arts and spoken word;” Miller explained.
The idea and goals are big but the execution is still very grassroots. The feminist festival in Toronto receives no public funding.
Life for artists is tough in Toronto, but Miller said the circumstances are especially challenging for women.
“There’s still a huge discrepancy in representation between female and male artists,” she said.
“There are different obstacles, in the visual arts … The grant organizations tend to be a bit better because it’s a government organization and there’s a lot of accountability, [but] commercial galleries … and even in huge galleries, if you look at programming for the past year you’ll pretty much always see that … the dynamic is often a huge male artist in the main gallery and a queer artist or a feminist artist in the sub gallery.”
It’s an issue a group of feminists based in New York City has taken issue with for years. The Guerrilla Girls launched campaigns demanding greater representation of female artists in major American art institutions including one that used the catch-phrase: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?”
While their objectives are similar, Miller said Ladyfest takes a more inclusive and subtler approach to advocating for greater representation of women in commercial and public galleries.
An international collective of artists called the Evolutionary Girls Club is taking part in Ladyfest Toronto 2008.
“The way that they’re different is they’re about creating a network and letting everyone in,” the organizer explained.
This year’s event also features spoken word courtesy of the Asian Arts Freedom School, dance, music with shows by Halifax’s Ghost Bees and Emma McKenna, and workshops on everything from digital recording to zine production to getting more involved in politics.
Ladyfest Toronto runs until Sept. 21. For more information, click here.
