In an eight thousand year journey through the nooks and crannies of history, through amulets, deities, virgins, demons, loving mothers, witches, mythical avengers, seductive beauties, warriors, revolutionary heroines and bloodthirsty assassins, the British Museum She asks what is the power of women, in the society of before, now and always.
Fear and aggression appear everywhere in the exhibition Feminine Power: From the Divine to the Fiendish, which has just opened at the Bloomsbury Museum. But also passion and desire, magic and malice, justice and defense, compassion and wisdom. Those are the great concepts around which the seventy objects gathered by the British are organized, most of them from its own collection.
The exhibition, which when it closes in London will move to the Australian Museum in Canberra and then to five Spanish cities in collaboration with the La Caixa Banking Foundation, brings together ancient sculptures, sacred artifacts and contemporary works of art from six continents to explore the different ways in which femininity (in a broad sense, not exclusively of women, almost non-binary) has been perceived over time in different places, up to today. It examines the feminine power in saints, goddesses, virgins and all kinds of spiritual beings, in connection with various areas of human experience, be it wisdom, passion, war, justice or piety.
The great novelty is that the institution has invited for the first time five highly recognized women in their respective fields to guide the visitors with a combination of videos and audio recordings. They are physical therapist Leyla Hussein, known for her campaign against gender-based violence, teacher Mary Beard, writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day, human rights activist Rabbia Sidique, and comedian Deborah Frances-White. .
Among the seventy objects that make up the exhibition are things as diverse as hand-painted scrolls from Tibet, Roman sculptures, Egyptian amulets, Japanese prints, Aztec statues, tools from the Congo, Bolivian masks and Indian carvings. A coin from the time of Julius Caesar with the image of Venus (symbol of female power) celebrates his military victories.
The Hindu goddess Kali, loved and feared at the same time, who transcends time, destroys ignorance and guides her followers to knowledge, makes her appearance in a three-dimensional work by contemporary Bengali artist Kaushik Gosh. Despite her terrifying appearance, with a bloody tongue, the severed heads of her enemies forming a necklace, and her mutilated arms serving as her belt, she frees those who worship her from the worries of everyday life and the eternal cycle of life. and death.
A sculpture by the North American Kiki Smith, loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of New York and modeled after the body of a woman of flesh and blood, represents feminine power as another figure, Lilith, the first wife of Adam in Jewish demonology, with deep blue eyes that seem to stick like knives into the beholder. She refused to accept the role reserved for her by the creator and, expelled from Eden for insubordination, she became a lover of Satan. Especially during the 19th century, she was considered a symbol of rebellion against the moral expectations of a patriarchal and macho society.
But not everything is Medusa, Circe and Hecate, and figures that inspire fear or revulsion, such as the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, associated with annihilation. There is also the Virgin Mary, the Hawaiian deity Pele, the mermaid Mami Wata, who inhabits African, Caribbean and South American rivers and seas, and the arctic princess Sedna, who provides food from the oceans and receives the souls of those who die. of illness
“The British Museum has organized a fascinating journey through the world and through history, full of fury and passion, wisdom and magic, to see the different ways in which feminine authority and power have been perceived, from cultures ancient to current traditions, and their profound influence on people's lives”, says Belinda Crear, curator of the exhibition.
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