“Making” history in the feminine:udGenealogical encounters at the Berlin Biennial 2008

摘要

This paper explores work at the Berlin Biennial 2008 that was made by three women artists born in the 1970s in response to the Modernist practice of women artists or designers from an earlier generation (Nairy Baghramian andudJanette Laverriere (b. 1909); Susanne Winterling and Eileen Gray (1878-1976) Paulina Olowska and Zofia Stryjenska (1891-1974). Drawing on ideas from Luce Irigaray and Christine Battersby, I offer a narrative that sees the work in terms of woman-to-woman genealogies and made 'in , of and from the feminine'. Along with theorists Griselda Pollock and Hillary Robinson, these philosophers might be seen, in this paper, as my cognitive ‘woman-to-woman genealogy’, intersecting with that of the artists and enabling the particular and motivated shape I give to the historical and current, ‘political’, significance of work. The artists might be seen as ‘making’ history in a quite literal sense: in the physical facture of a contemporary practice that looks back, beyond second wave feminism, to speak to a current audience. Encountering a generation prior to, and one younger than, my own and writing about their work I am ‘making’ history in the more conventional sense. udMy hope is that this cross generational segue between theory and practice will have resonance for the artists and for a wider audience and thus contribute to the unrolling debate that is ‘making’ history in a third sense - the next installment of the feminist project.