An all-female cabinet faces a nuclear crisis. What do they do? Confront their threatened country, stick to their anti-war principles, or give in to the Trumpian figure threatening to push the button?
These are some of the questions that the audience in the cinema of the Greek National Museum of Contemporary Art, EMST, is asked to consider by Israeli artist Yael Bartana. Her anti-war film Two minutes to midnight is one of the highlights of the institution’s latest exhibition series, What if Women Ruled the World?.
For the first time in the world, the floors and halls of EMST were opened last month to an all-female cast of artists.
“The title of the exhibition is deliberately provocative,” says Katerina Gregos, the museum’s artistic director, who smiles at the prospect of visitors exploring the “hypothetical question” of how different the world might be: “What we are doing is asking visitors to think about what it would be like if governance and decision-making were exclusively in the hands of women.”
Would there have been so much war and conflict in such a world, or would there have been less chest-beating and more compromise and considered discussion, she wonders.
“In short, would the world be a better place? We are not advocating the creation of a matriarchy. We are inviting reflection on whether there is an alternative. Because let’s face it, with wars raging and the senseless violence we see – mostly caused by men almost every day – you can’t say we are in the best place.”
The exhibition has taken the art world by surprise in a country where the feminist movement only emerged in the 1980s, three decades after Greek women were given the right to vote. It was only when a socialist government reformed family law in 1983 that the idea of marriage equality was recognized and dowries were officially abolished.
Forty-three years after joining the EU, the Mediterranean country remains one of the bloc’s most socially conservative members, with a patriarchal mentality and a poor gender equality index.
For Gregos, the all-women program is a correction, both culturally and politically. Because women artists have been so systematically overlooked in Greece, she says, the goal of the year-long project is both to redress the imbalance and “radically reimagine what a museum would look like if, instead of a few token pieces, works by women artists were the majority.”
Supporters think it is high time, but critics see it as an enrichment of wokery.
Exhibitions about women by women are nothing new. But the work of female creatives is still noticeably underrepresented at art fairs—and solo shows by female artists are still rare, even in major museums. It wasn’t until 2020, some 200 years after its founding, that the UK’s National Gallery held its first major exhibition by a female artist. Earlier this year, the Tasmania Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) made headlines by closing its exhibition space (which contained some of her most famous works) to men and admitting only women.
But by daring to go where no other national museum has gone – often because of contractual obligations and a reluctance to remove well-known pieces from collections – EMST has broken new ground.
“The response was overwhelmingly positive,” Gregos said. “There was an incredibly diverse range of visitors of all ages and backgrounds.”
For Dr Vicki Kerr, a New Zealand artist and cultural theorist, the “boldness” is reason enough to visit Athens this summer. “For a publicly funded art museum on what many see as the periphery of Europe, this is a brave and breathtaking move. It is curatorially thought-provoking.”
The exhibition has resulted in a reorganization of an entire floor of the museum’s permanent collection, with 46 artists of all ages and ethnicities represented in what will have been 18 solo exhibitions by the end of the year. Among them are Phyllida Barlow, the British sculptor who died last year; the acclaimed American photographer Lola Flash; the Iranian-born American artist Tala Madani; the groundbreaking Greek Leda Papaconstantinou; and Penny Siopis, a South African considered one of the most important artistic voices of her generation.
Previously, only 37% of the artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection were women. Since Gregos three years ago, EMST has set itself the mission of breaking down boundaries. They want to use the institution’s public role to address issues that ‘matter’.
The question behind the exhibition title is inspired by Yael Bartana’s famous neon work of the same name, which now illuminates the north and south facades of the former brewery in the EMST building.
It is questionable whether the question has been answered, even if Bartana says so. Two minutes to midnight It’s clear what it would become: the all-female council ends up in a cemetery, where they symbolically dump their weapons in a grave.
For visitors and participants it is more important to see artists who have been marginalized for so long take center stage.
“We like to think of art as neutral,” said Siopis, whose multimedia work is among the show’s centerpieces. “We assume it transcends gendered, racialized, sexualized cultural definitions — but it doesn’t.”
Related: What if women ruled the world?
At 70, Siopis is typical of her generation: while her extraordinary output is celebrated in South Africa, she has never received the international recognition of William Kentridge and other contemporaries, baffling critics who were enchanted by her oeuvre at EMST, her first-ever museum retrospective in Europe. Even today, she said, history painting, considered the highest genre in art, remains the domain of the male artist, while still life, “the lowest genre,” is seen as the domain of women artists.
“Yes, things have changed – but not enough,” she said. “It’s safe to say that there are still huge prejudices against women around the world, and that’s why there’s so much space for an exhibition like this that so consciously addresses women’s experiences.”