The Future is Female 8 Twyla artists who explore identity and what it means to be a woman.
In honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we bring you a selection of Twyla artists who examine topics surrounding feminism and women’s issues. Whether challenging cultural norms around the world or deconstructing images of women in popular culture, these artists show us that the future truly is female.
1 / Natalie White
Natalie White is a provocative and progressive feminist artist who explores her own identity through the lens of a camera, most notably with giant self-portrait Polaroids. Her pieces span performance, video, painting, and photography, while using the female form to draw attention to gender inequality.
2 / Amelie Chabannes
Amelie’s art looks at notions of identity and its different portrayals through philosophy, psychology, and art history. Much of her work displays her interest in fusional relationships, where two people are attached at the hip, resulting in the destruction of the individual. In her portrait of Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female pilot, Amelie captures the young aviator's fearlessness and resolve. Interesting side note: Amelie is currently working on a documentary project celebrating the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage.
3 / Kristen Schiele
Kristen incorporates movie stills, vintage magazines, library print-outs and her own photographs into her works and often makes reference to fascinating and prominent women in her work. For example, in Melanie Malone, Kristen pays tribute to a 80s punk rocker and drummer and incorporates a graphic mix of nostalgia, punk feminism and heavy metal vibes.
4 / Pamela Joseph
Pamela’s paintings, Censored, were inspired by edited Iranian art books. Any representation of nudity in these books, including works by artists such as Picasso, Hockney and Matisse, are rendered illegible, either blacked-out by hand or pixilated in printing.
5 / Chanel Kennebrew
6 / Miru Kim
Miru’s nude self-portraits are daring, often captured in dangerous places where the naked female body is considered unlawful. For her series, “The Camels Way,” Miru traveled with local nomads across the deserts of Mali, Morocco, India, Jordan, and Mongolia, often disguised as a man.
7 / Kim McCarty
Kim uses a watercoloring technique called wet-on-wet in order to achieve her soft and ghostly images, often portraits of women. This method produces extremely unpredictable, yet magical results as colors are flow into each other and the subjects almost appear to be on the verge of disappearance.
8 / Alette Simmons-Jimenez
Alette’s work focuses on the coexistence of opposite forces, dreams and reality, and our individual roles in the larger universe. She sites one of the main sources of inspiration as her children; this can be undoubtedly seen in her large-scale images of bird’s nests, which celebrate an iconic symbol of motherhood.
