5 gallerists on what it means to support women artists today

For decades, women gallerists have worked with women artists to create networks of support, friendship and research that seek to challenge the male-dominated art world environment. Today, they continue to maintain the urgency of this project in various ways.

The five women gallerists featured here range from London to Lagos, and this global range represents the often intersectional approach women gallerists take to programming. These galleries defend the diversity of issues that women artists work on today, from body politics to environmentalism.

Philomene Magers and Monika Sprüth

Sprüth Magers

“We believe in the need for our artists to be seen in public,” said Philomene Magers, co-founder of Sprüth Magers, referring to the gallery’s progressive and avant-garde conceptual work that seeks to defend and position itself in the public and within the public. institutional collections. With large-scale spaces in Berlin, London, Los Angeles and New York, Sprüth Magers is renowned for its rigorous, curatorial and research-based program, where the work of women artists has always found a home.

The beginnings of Sprüth Magers are based on the friendship between Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, who joined their respective galleries in Germany in 1998. The gallery’s partners began working in the 1980s and 90s, in the wake of the women’s liberation movement and at a time when the representation of female artists was particularly urgent in a male-dominated art world.

“Representing women artists is something that has come naturally to the gallery,” Magers said. Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, who work with the feminism of this earlier period, have been associated with gallerists since the early 1980s. Today, alongside a more established roster, the gallery is committed to a diverse program of young women artists, including Nora Turato, Kara Walker and Analia Saban, including a broad spectrum of performance, video, photography, sculpture, painting and installation.

Magers emphasizes the importance of this variety: “We believe that our artists are contributing to the importance of culture in society, and they represent the time we live in in rich and diverse ways”, he explained.

Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington

PPOW

When they established their gallery, PPOW, in New York’s East Village in 1983, Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington saw what rarely reflected the political realities and implications of the women’s liberation, civil rights, and anti-war movements. USA “We wanted to show works that spoke to the moment, and we happen to have a high percentage of female artists in our program,” Olsoff said.

The gallerists “have always had a passion for storytelling, figuration and politics,” explained Olsoff. Artists like Carolee Schneemann have become a mainstay of the gallery’s program, but Olsoff also wants to highlight the work of the younger artists they represent today. “We don’t want a program of watered-down versions of early pioneering work; the work must be committed to the current moment, and in that sense, we see a lot of intersectional and ecological work,” he said. Astrid Terrazas and Mi Kafchin are two such artists who explore trans aesthetics, utopias and current technological and environmental realities, for example.

Olsoff tells Artsy that while the relentless pace of the art market is difficult for artists, continuing to present a challenging body of politically engaged work is a strategy for advancing change. “It’s important for us to emphasize the need to protect the integrity of a program, and that collecting is not just an accumulation of artwork,” Olsoff said. “If the collectors support it in every program, that’s what will make the difference.”

When he returned to Nigeria 15 years ago after studying in the UK, Adenrele Sonariwo noticed that there was little in the contemporary art world in his country that reflected the experience of young people like him. Rele Sonariwo grew out of temporary pop-up exhibitions showcasing the work of young artists he would visit locally in Lagos. Much of the work Sonariwo is drawn to is by women artists, whose stories she says have a personal resonance.

“I am very aware of the challenges women face in the art world and that stereotypes of African women are still present in contemporary art,” explains Sonariwo. Although the gallery has additional locations in Los Angeles and London, Sonariwo reiterates the importance of Rele’s Lagos territory. “I want to represent the many stories that can come out of this region,” he said. In Rele’s group exhibition in Lagos, “Beyond Veils”, for example, Progress Nyandoro, Sedireng Olehile Mothibatsela, Tizta Berhanu and Diana Ejaita, a group of women artists from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Ethiopia and Nigeria, respectively, present works.

“It’s about supporting not just one artist but a whole generation,” Sonariwo told Artsy when asked what it means to support women artists today. “Upcoming artists can see what they can do by looking at this work.”

She added, “Some of the artists I work with are activists, advocates and feminists, so their work empowers up-and-coming artists to make a difference in their communities.”

Océane Sailly is the founder of Hunna Art, a nomadic contemporary art gallery that has recently exhibited in Failaka, Paris, Riyadh and Los Angeles. The gallery represents women artists living in the Gulf region who deal with the history of the Arabian Peninsula. “I knew I wanted to work with artists and art professionals of my generation and create a platform to redefine the transparency of the gallerist-artist relationship,” Sailly told Artsy. He stated that he hopes to create a safe and comfortable space for the artists he works with.

“I think museums and art institutions can sometimes be performative to support women artists and other marginalized practitioners,” Sailly explains. He says that the presence of women artists in museum collections and in the art world in general is still an urgent task that gallerists have to face: “In recent years there have been some positive developments. The basis for change is still being built, so it is very important to reaffirm the conscious action to support women artists.’

Equally important to supporting women artists is the regional aspect of the gallery’s program, which is made up of artists who are all working in the Arabian Peninsula. “When I started Hunna, most of these women artists lacked a place to showcase their work locally and internationally,” she said.

The diversity of Hunna’s works is made clear, in any case, by artists such as Nour Elbasuni, who “proposes new perspectives on masculinity through the female gaze”, said Sailly, “while Alia Zaal, Alymamah Rashed and Talin Hazbar use it. the surrounding landscapes to investigate oneself and the ecological, historical and social aspects of the surroundings.’

Millie Jason Foster

Gillian Jason Gallery

Gillian Jason Gallery is built on a cross-generational passion for supporting women artists, and is the first and only gallery in the UK to focus exclusively on women artists. Inspired by the legacy of Millie Jason Foster’s grandmother Gillian Jason, who founded the gallery in 1980, the gallery has had a physical space in central London since 2021.

Gillian Jason Gallery’s program is extensive. “We’re presenting the best of women’s art, whatever that art is,” Foster said. “We are not a gallery that only presents feminist art.” The creation of documentation and research is central to the curatorial project of the gallery; he creates complete catalogs for each show and makes sure to contextualize each artwork in the exhibition with thorough research.