Women & The Art of Change

At a time of significant national and global uncertainty, the Barbican's 2018 season, The Art of Change, explored how artists respond to, reflect and potentially effect change in the social and political landscape. The season presented bold artistic responses to vital global issues including feminism, climate change and human rights, while providing a platform for voices currently underrepresented in the arts.  

How do filmmakers respond to 'the art of change'? In a year-long commission, we're working with a different filmmaker each month to present a new film in response to one of the themes we're exploring in The Art of Change. Director Helen Plumb presented 'A Prickly Subject' - an all-female production which follows the account of a woman who is grappling with the decision of whether or not she should embrace her body hair in public - a prickly subject indeed...

Endlessly inventive choreographer Rhiannon Faith shone a light on the complex subject of domestic abuse in an empowering and participatory performance highlighting human resilience. In 'Smack That', Beverly is having a party and you are one of her guests. There are games, drinks, shared conversation, energetic dance and heartbreaking moments as she bravely gives a raw and honest account of surviving an abusive relationship.

Touching on themes of countercultures, subcultures and minorities of all kinds, 'Another Kind of Life' followed the lives of individuals and communities operating on the fringes of society from America to India, Chile to Nigeria. The exhibition reflected a more diverse, complex view of the world, as captured and recorded by photographers. 

'She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted'  After colleagues silenced US Senator Elizabeth Warren while she read a letter by Coretta Scott King, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unwittingly summed up women’s ongoing struggle for equal rights. A century after the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which first gave (some) women the right to vote in the UK, these films look at women’s rebellious and often dangerous efforts to gain equality, as captured in selected cinematic journeys from around the world. This season featured the incredible stories of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for US presidential candidate; transgender New Zealand MP Georgina Beyer, and the fearless Malalai Joya, who ran in the first parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in nearly thirty years. 

For her first major London commission, artist Yto Barrada wove together personal narratives and political ideals to create a complex portrait of a city and its people in a state of transition.The sweeping form of The Curve was transformed with a dramatic installation – encompassing a mural, film commission, sculptures, and a series of live and recorded performances – to consider how a city and its people might address the process of reinvention following disaster. 

The Women’s Movement of the 1970s empowered women to step behind the camera in larger numbers. Their pioneering work platformed voices, stories and issues previously ignored or misrepresented. In our 'Artists & Activists' film season, we celebrated the ground-breaking directors who made films outside the mainstream industry, frequently through activist film cooperatives and collectives. Their work was screened in ‘consciousness-raising’ groups, at political conventions and in other alternative venues, and was often intended to spark discussion and action on women’s issues.These films offered alternate visions to the mainstream, introducing subjects of interest to women and reshaping how films were made in ways that continue to be influential. Through cinema vérité, animation, experimentation and autobiographical techniques – such as images from dreams and entries from diaries – a new cinematic language was forged to capture a shared experience.

New York's iconic theatre group channels a raucous 1971 debate on women’s liberation that still reverberates today in 'The Town Hall Affair'. In front of an audience of literary heavyweights gathered at New York’s Town Hall, pugnacious American novelist Norman Mailer squares up against a panel of prominent feminist advocates including Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston and Diana Trilling. The occasion is captured in the documentary Town Bloody Hall. 

Best known for her work during the Great Depression of the 1930s, this exhibition celebrates Dorothea Lange’s photographic vision from her early studio portraiture and iconic ‘Migrant Mother’ to the post-Pearl Harbour internment of Japanese-Americans and changing face of the social and physical American landscape after WWII. A formidable character with a political purpose, Lange focused her lens on human suffering and hardship to critique issues of injustice, inequality, migration and displacement with a sense of urgency that is of immediate relevance to today’s political climate. This will be the first UK retrospective of American documentary photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and takes place in the Barbican Art Gallery from 22 June 2018.