Statues For Equality by Aussie Artists Gillie + Marc Schattner Unveils First 10 Public Statues in New York

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Zimbabwean scholar Tererai Trent has been immortalized in a bronze statue in New York

Life-size statues of 10 accomplished women across a wide spectrum of global life were unveiled in New York this week. Standing next to larger-than-life humanist-activist stars like Oprah, Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett is Zimbabwean scholar Tererai Trent.

Trent grew up in Zimbabwe where girls were not educated. Determined to learn, Trent taught herself to read and relocated to the US in 1998 through the efforts of an American nonprofit that visited her village. This “dream” come true of getting a bachelor’s degree, a master’s, and a PhD was realized after she wrote down her aspirations, sealing them in a tin can and burying them deep in the ground.

Trent’s life in America was hardly a carefree, upwards climb, but like so many women, she is a survivor. Today Dr Tererai Trent is one of the world’s most internationally recognized voices for quality education and women’s empowerment. Distinguished as Oprah Winfrey’s “All-time favorite guest”, Trent is a prominent activist for equal rights to education. Read more about Dr. Trent’s story.

Where . . . oh where are the women?

The lack of representation of women in public spaces has long been associated with patriarchal attitudes and the general “invisibility” of women globally.

New York is grappling with its own embarrassing dearth of female statues in Manhattan and the five boroughs, with a whopping 3% of public humans honored being female. Consider that one of those memorable female “beings” is Alice in Wonderland in Central Park, and you understand the scope of the problem.

Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.

There’s a note of irony in two Aussie artists seeking to remedy New York’s “no women statues” problem, but in the era of Trump, we’ll take any help we can get. Sculptors Gillie and Marc Schattner launched Statues For Equality to commemorate Women's Equality Day on August 26 under the "Sculpted for Equal Rights" banner.

Note that Sydney and London are also in the ditch with their own scores of 4% and 3% of historical women statues, suggesting that New York can be a global launchpad for their effort, a hunch confirmed by the Statues For Equality website.

The New York project is just the start of Statues For Equality and the initiative is now worldwide, with projects in many different countries, including Australia the UK and the US. Gillie and Marc are keen that the sculptures are representative of all women and know that the public are the best people to ensure this happens! 

“We hope that as the project expands, it will include a broader diversity of race, class, ability, sexual orientation and gender expression,” says Gillie.

Besides Blanchett, Kidman, Trent and Winfrey, other women honored with New York statues include Cheryl Strayed, Gabby Douglas, Jane Goodall, Janet Mock, Pink, and Tracy Dyson. Read their stories.

Eye: South African Artist Tony Gum's 'Ode to She' Wins 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize

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South African Artist Tony Gum's 'Ode to She' Wins 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize

South African artist Tony Gum is the recipient of the 2017 Miami Beach Pulse Prize. Gum's gallery Christopher Moller Gallery mounted a solo show for Gum, who is barely 22 years old. 

Gum's presentation 'Ode to She' is inspired by her own experiences and reflections as a Xhosa woman. Her work is rooted in the tradition of 'intonjane', an Xhosa rite of passage into womanhood practiced in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The ritual in which a girl is secluded at her homestead after her first period, is symbolic of her sexual maturity and ability to bear children.

AOC has previously written about the talented Tony Gum. See end of article. 

NY Dem. Rep. Carolyn Maloney Soldiers On As Passionate Advocate For Women's History Museum

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NEW YORK DEMOCRAT CONGRESSWOMAN CAROLYN MALONEY IS INTERVIEWED BY TODAY IN 2014 WITH ROOMMATES DEMOCRAT CONGRESSWOMEN DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ OF FLORIDA AND TERRI SEWELL OF ALABAMA AT HER HOME IN WASHINGTON, DC. MALONEY'S HUSBAND CLIFTON MALONEY DIED IN 2009 MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING IN TIBET.

New York Congresswoman Democrat Carolyn Maloney's Manhattan district includes Trump Tower, making Maloney the primary advocate who is personally lobbying Trump himself and his senior administration officials to support legislation that would finally birth a Smithsonian museum dedicated to women's history on the National Mall.

Politico writes that Maloney was handing out folders of material on the museum, handing them out to Trump and his (few) top female advisors at a congressional picnic in June. 

“I talked to Ivanka about it, I talked to Melania about it, I talked to Karen Pence about it, I talked to Kellyanne [Conway] about it,” Maloney said. “I handed it directly to the president and he said he would read it. I asked Kellyanne for advice on how to approach it. She said to talk to the president directly, she said she would not do it on my behalf.”

Maloney said she had another chance to bond with Conway on the dance floor last weekend at a star-studded party at Washington doyenne Lally Weymouth’s Hamptons summer home. “I thought, ‘Hey, this is my chance to lobby her,’” Maloney said of the party, which was also attended by George Soros, Steven Spielberg, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, among others. “I kept working her over.”

In 2014, President Obama approved the creation of a commission to evaluate the need and feasibility for creating the women's history museum, whose funding would come from private donors and not taxpayers. 

“Right now, we’re only ten months into our brand new African-American Museum, and our next big capital project is a complete revitalization of the Air and Space Museum, which will be $650 million,” said Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas. “It would be very difficult for us to handle a new building right now.”

More feasible than a stand-alone women’s museum, St. Thomas said, was doing “a better job of telling the story of women’s history” across the existing museums. There's little doubt that a Hillary Clinton administration would be more receptive to a women's history museum. 

In May 2017 Elle touched base with Maloney, who has served in the House since 1992 as part of the largest female contingent ever voted into the DC House of Representatives. Maloney, a life-long advocate of women's rights quickly bonded with then 10-term Democrat Patricia Schroeder who tells the story of her own arrival in DC. "Congress "is about Chivas Regal, thousand-dollar bills, Learjets, and beautiful women," one of Schroeder's male colleagues told her upon her arrival. "Why are you here?" Read on at Elle to learn more about Rep. Carolyn Maloney's women's-history-rich story.

Venice Biennale Explores Female Archetypes, Goddesses & Witches In Iraqi & Irish Pavillions

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Mother goddess, presumed to be a Fertility goddess. Returned from Holland in 2010. 5,000 BCE. Courtesy Iraq Museum; Department of Antiquities, Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities; and Ruya Foundation.

In an interesting juxtaposition of women's history and art and contemporary events, Iraq and Ireland are both channeling feminine archetypes at the 2017 Venice Biennale. 

Iraq

The Ruya Foundation, organizer of the Iraqi pavilion at Venice, is sending a total of 40 ancient Iraqi artifacts, some of them looted and now returned. The antiquities will reside alongside works by eight modern and contemporary Iraqi artists and a new commission by Francis Alÿs, who held art workshops at an Iraqi refugee camp last year.

The ambitious exhibition, titled “Archaic,” will inspire a dialogue between the modern and contemporary works and antiquities loaned by the Iraq Museum spanning six millennia, from the Neolithic Age to the Neo-Babylonian Period.

Ireland

Artist Jesse Jones will represent Ireland at the May 57th Venice Biennale, with her presentation 'Tremble Tremble', curated by Tessa Giblin. The 1970s chant was sung by women in the Italian Wages for Housework movement: “Tremate, tremate, le streghe sono tornate!” (tremble, tremble, the witches have returned!).

Even though the Catholic Church remains dominant in Ireland, there is a rising social movement demanding change between church and state. In 'Tremble, Tremble', the artist calls for a return of the witch as a "feminist archetype and disrupter" with an inherent ability to affect change. 

The artwork envisions a different legal order, "one in which the multitude are brought together in a symbolic, gigantic body, to proclaim a new law, that of 'In Utera Gigantae' writes ArtNet. 

Jones has researched the ways in which the law transmits memory over time, with a research combining an archeological dig of 3.5 million-year-old female specimen, the oppression of women during the 16th century witch trials, the symphysiotomy (a brutal form of caesarean) trials, and the legalisation of abortion in Ireland.

The film work takes testimony, statements, and written lyrics, blending them into a powerful incantation. The artist is collaborating with theatrical artist Olwen Fouéré and sound artist Susan Stenger to make an “expanded form of cinema.”

Jesse Jones, Tremble Tremble (2017) production image. Photo Ros Kavanagh.