Thursday 2 September 2021

And Evening With Women @the Well and Claudia Clare


























































An Evening with Women@the Well and Claudia Clare. 

Weds Sept 15th, 2021, 6 - 8pm, doors close 9pm. 

6.30 Claudia Clare - artist working with Women @the Well
6.45 Harriet Wistrich - Founder of the Centre for Women's Justice 
6.55 Lynda Dearlove  - CEO Women @the Well 
7.10 A minute's silence ended with the smashing of the pot, 'Brave Face.' 

The evening includes a display of the pots from our joint project, 'And The Door Opened.'  
I will be talking about the pots and the project and the director of W@W will discuss the work they have been doing over the past 18 months and how Covid has affected the women they support. 

About the Project:
W@W is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected - or at risk of being affected - by prostitution. They also offer support to women wishing to exit the sex trade and help them to identify and overcome the barriers that maybe obstructing that process. 

And The Door Opened, is a collection of pots, made in partnership with W@W, that illustrate the lives of the women they work with, based on accounts provided by the women themselves. Some of the pots represent the accounts of women survivors who have already exited and others are still involved in prostitution. 

The aim is to enhance the public's understanding of what prostitution is and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

Wednesday 25 August 2021

Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)


 



























Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13)

Atefeh Rajavi Sahaaleh was a girl living in a small town, Neka, in Northern Iran. Her mother died when she was a small child and her father was an addict and neglected her. She was raised mostly by her grandparents. She was an isolated, lonely child and extremely vulnerable. At the age of twelve she was raped and prostituted by a taxi driver who was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Guard. She  - not her pimp/rapists - was imprisoned, numerous times and, when she threatened to go public, she was sentenced to death and hanged, on August 15th, aged sixteen, for 'crimes against chastity.' 

Even in Iran, it is illegal to execute a child so her documents were falsified. She is not the only one and Iran is not the only country that does this. The response in Iran was muted at first because the state owned and controlled media covered it up. Word go out though and women got increasingly angry. 

The criminalisation of underage girls and corresponding impunity of their abusers well be horribly familiar to sex trade survivors the world over but, in Iran, where the bodies of women and girls are used to symbolise the male (dis)/'honour' of the nation state, it takes on another dimension: in effect the state is the pimp. 

This pot was made with a group of Iranian friends, mostly refugees, both men and women, and was smashed in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, August 15th, 2011. I rebuilt it, leaving some pieces out so you can see the image of Atefeh inside. It remains the only image there is of her - it's from her ID card. 

The edges of the gaps are picked out in gold to honour her short life and her brave attempt to fight the injustices she faced, alone and hugely disadvantaged. 

Nasrine Sotoudeh, an extraordinarily courageous, Iranian human rights lawyer, made the following observation on Atefeh's case and countless others like hers: 

"The courts somehow deal much more rigorously with the women than with the men. The weakest point in our downfall is that this is happening right in front of our eyes but, sadly, we pretend that we just don't see it." 

Sotoudeh has herself been imprisoned and beaten on numerous occasions for standing up for girls like Atefeh and trying to represent and defend them in court. 

Today we remember Atefeh, as the Taliban secure their hold on Kabul and the whole of Afghanistan, and women's sex-based, human rights take another turn for the worse. These are not good times for women. 

Saturday 22 May 2021

And The Door Opened, ceramic project with Women @the Well, (W@W): rescheduling for 2021-22




Four views are collaged together to show the outside of pot, which depicts the men that buy sex from women exploited in the sex trade. The pot was smashed in Centenary Square, Bradford, at The March Against the Sex Trade, Filia international feminist conference, October 19th, 2019.

2. 'I'm Not The Criminal,' 2020, Two views

In its unbroken state, this was 'The Invisible Man.' The shattered and rebuilt version is 'I'm Not The Criminal,' depicting, inside the pot, the March Against the Sex Trade with Fiona Broadfoot who led the march with other sex trade survivors. 

3. Me with 'I'm Not The Criminal,' 2020. (all photos: Sylvain Deleu)

About the Project:

W@W is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected - or at risk of being affected - by prostitution. They also offer support to women wishing to exit the sex trade and help them to identify and overcome the barriers that maybe obstructing that process. 

And The Door Opened,’ is a collection of pots, made in partnership with W@W, that illustrate the lives of the women they work with, based on accounts provided by the women themselves. Some of the pots represent the accounts of women survivors who have already exited and others are still involved in prostitution. 

The aim is to enhance the public's understanding of what prostitution is and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

When and Where - latest updates and rescheduling for 2021 - 2022

Planning in the pipeline: 

Ceramic ArtLondon, postponed to 2022, Central St Martins, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA 'And The Door Opened' is part of the Claytalks lecture series including a display of some of the pots. This event was de-platformed, (cancelled,) apparently by a combination of the pimp lobby and transactivists. Legal action in process. 

Wood Green Library, 191 High Road, Wood Green, N22 6XD. Readings and pot smashing ceremony - watch this space for updates late 2021 or 2022. If this goes ahead, it will probably be late 2022 or early 2023. 

Past Events 2021

Filia Conference, Portsmouth, 16th -17th October 2021 
Presentation about And the Door Opened, and pot smashing ceremony to end the Femicide March,  remembering the women murdered because they were women. 

Wednesday September 15th 2021 6-8pm an evening with Women@the Well and Claudia Clare, 
talking about the pots and the project including about the work they've been doing over the past 18 months and how Covid has affected the women they support. 

Thursday December 9th, 2021, 6-9pm, Fore Street for All, with REACT Edmonton, Artist Hive Studios, Fisher Cheng Architects and Enfield Council. A talk in two parts with a display of pots from And the Door Opened. Part one was about project women's accounts that produced the pots, part two went into more detail about how the pots were made. The display of pots continued in the Library until February 10th 2022. 

Past Events 2020:

Jan 23rd 2020: Talking about 'And The Door Opened,' at Zuleika.
Informal talk, discussing the project with Q&A. 

Jan 14th-31st 2020 Zuleika Gallery, 6 Mason's Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU
Display of four pots from 'And The Door Opened,' as part of a gallery artists show, 'January Edit.'  Zuleika's official launch of the project

Past events 2019

November 7thth-December 31st 2019 with Collage-arts at Collage Artspace 4 and Wood Green Library, Library Mall, 191 High St, London, N22 6DZ
Window display and display in library Nov 7th 2019 -Jan 6th, 2020
Launch with speakers and pot-breaking ceremony: Nov 25th  (to coincide with UN 16 days campaigning to eliminate violence against women;) Details of event available here
Photos and brief summary here.

Demonstration of mending a pot with talk: Nov 30th 12-4pm;
How to mend a pot - workshop for participants Dec 7th 12-4pm.
Brief description and photos of both events here.

October 30th 2019a talk about the project at Soho Farmhouse, Oxfordshire

October 19th 2019unofficial launch - Filia Conference, Bradford, 'The Invisible Man' was smashed as part of the March against the Sex Trade. Pictures and description of the event here.

Sunday 9 May 2021

Cancel Culture: the reality for one artist

Cancel Culture: Introduction

From time to time, someone on social media asks if 'Cancel Culture' is real. This is my account of what I have experienced, on and off, since 2010 - it is not definitive, or necessarily representative, but it is authentic. It is one artist's experience of a mix of censorship, threat of the same, or 'de-platforming,' (being disinvited after an invitation has been accepted, confirmed and, in some cases signed off as part of a contract,) over a period of eleven years. I also discuss the impact and reasons why it happens.


2010: Shattered, Keighley Castle

Summary: the road to Hell is paved with ignorance and good intentions

After two years of planning and 30 days before opening, I received an email from the exhibitions organiser at Bradford Metropolitan Council’s Museum’s and Galleries, to say one of my pots would be withdrawn from the proposed show, ‘Shattered,’ because of the ‘clear vagina imagery.’ I noticed they'd used an image of that pot for their publicity and pointed that out. I also lobbied locally among people of influence I knew. A diligent local journalist noticed an unusual silence about the forthcoming show so investigated. He found me and my blog posts and wrote an article in the Keighley News. The local vicar complained it was censorship. The battle raged. I won a partial victory. The pot was reinstated, but only one side was made visible. Visitors complained that they couldn't see the work properly. I sought compensation and got it - in kind – in the form of magazine quality photos of the show. 

For the record ‘Shattered’ comprised five pots, each 2 metres high. It was ‘Princess Hymen’ that was withdrawn. There is no vagina imagery as such. The image is woman opening her make up bag. It is a visual pun, certainly, but hardly likely to offend. During the installation of the show, I was told that one of the complaints was that I'd ‘criticised their culture,’ by denouncing FGM, criticising hymen reconstruction, and questioning the entire concept of the virgin body. 

Princess Hymen is, first and foremost, a feminist work. It is about the concept of virginity, the obsession with the virgin body that only ever applies to girls and women, and the devastating impact this has on girls and women of all ages. The immediate assumption was that feminism would ‘offend the local Muslims.’ No one had thought to consult any of the local Muslim populations though, so on what basis was this decision made? And by whom? This was the second time a Museum had slandered both me, my work, and their own audiences, notably their Muslim audiences, and tried to dress up their own grotesque cultural relativism and cultural and religious ignorance, and present them as anti racism or at least some kind of community sensitivity. The first time was the same work which was to show at a venue in London. A similar anxiety was expressed. That time organiser understood and accepted that she couldn't know everything so, wisely, sought advice from someone who knew more. After a meeting, her fears allayed, the show went ahead. It was extended for a week by popular demand - notably from the local Muslim women. 

2016: Five Jugs

Summary: racism masquerading as anti-racism, coupled with incompetence.

After the above fiascos, I had sworn I would never show in a public sector space again. I broke my own promise when I was invited to show five jugs in an exhibition at People's History Museum, Manchester. 













There was a complaint by 11am on the first morning. I had represented, on a jug, a protest by French Arab women in Paris. One of them had written ‘Fuck the Sharia’ in English on her stomach. I depicted her and her slogan. The complainer declared she was offended shouted about it on Twitter. Her call to outrage was largely ignored but I responded with some care, as is my habit. I do it for the silent readers. By lunchtime the same day, I received an email from the Museum director saying they'd withdrawn another jug with a picture of a weeping man on it. ‘We thought it might be the Prophet Mohammed and that someone might be offended.’ In this case, no one had complained. I explained that depicting the Prophet isn't blasphemy - venerating the depiction is the blasphemy – and that to take sides in what amounts to a sectarian disagreement is extraordinarily ill advised. I also observed that there is no prohibition of blasphemy in British law. The title of the show, by the way, was ‘Ideas Worth Fighting For.’ 

All three of the above occasions were examples of a common art world problem. It can be summed up like this: ‘There's a great big hairy scary Muslim out there and I’m afraid he's going to OBJECT and possibly explode.’ It is fear of conflict, fear of disapproval, fear of peer group disapproval and ignorance of the issues, and acute anxiety about their own audiences brought about by simply not knowing who they are. It is also, it must be said, straight forward racism.  All of these are masqueraded as anti-racism. 
















2019: And the Door Opened - event planned for Crossbones Cemetery, Southwark

Summary: I am accused by sex workers rights activists of whoring myself to oligarchs 

Venue: Crossbones Cemetery, a 17th and 18th century burial ground for the "outcast poor," including a great many sexually exploited and prostituted women and girls. It was an early experiment in full decriminalisation of the sex trade. The women were licensed by the church to be exploited without fear of arrest so that men could abuse them with impunity. The women and girls were still denied Christian burial so were buried there unmarked and unremembered. My event, in partnership with women@thewell, an exiting service based in Kings Cross, was to be a memorial event, involving the smashing of a pot, to remember and name of all the women and girls murdered in prostitution since records have been kept. The host organisation, Bankside Open Spaces Trust, (BOST,) was keen and the event was agreed as was Arts Council funding. Then came the email: it was decided we couldn't proceed this event because, to paraphrase, ‘you sell your work in a Mayfair Gallery. You're too commercial.’ In fact, what had happened, was this: I had been invited to give a presentation of the proposed event for ten minutes to BOST and Friends of Crossbones. Half way through the presentation, three Phd students came in and proceeded to grill me for an hour. ‘It's too negative. We're "sex positive.”’ (“Sex positive?” I thought that old chestnut went out in the 1990s.) They were among the volunteers from Friends of Crossbones and disapproved of the event on political grounds. They duly withdrew their volunteer labour leaving BOST no option but to pull out. 














I had notched up another cancellation. Yet again, feminism was silenced. This time I had the wrong political response the sex trade and, again, those doing the cancelling were evasive and not entirely truthful. The ‘commercial’ line was a smoke screen and BOST knew it but wouldn’t admit to the real issue. They were also possibly in breach of contract which may have accounted for the studied silence. Fundamentally though, people who cancel, ‘no platform,’ or censor, always lie about the reasons because they know, damn well, they're doing something wrong.

The impact: 

i) Constantly watching over your shoulder to see where the next hit will come from. 

Add to these, two more instances worth discussing. One, in 2018, was to take part in a show about Clause 28 to be held at Sussex University. I was asked what I had learnt from Clause 28. I replied that a central part of the legislation was an attack on free speech and expression and suggested showing 'Ballad of Sister Bergdorf,' a new piece just completed. I also stated that if any of my work was shown, I would ask them to sign a contract to agree to leave it on display no matter how many people complain. At this point, all contact ceased without explanation. This may simply be that none of the work I offered was consistent with the aim of the show but, after a while, one becomes a little paranoid – hence my insistence on a contract. (Edit: Jan 4th 2022: the curator and director of this show was Dr Francesco Ventrella, the lecturer supporting and advising the students who repeatedly threatened Professor Kathleen Stock.) 

ii) The chill factor

The other instance worthy of note was in 2017. The Woman's Hour Craft Prize stated in the T&C's – paraphrasing again – ‘No blasphemy and nothing that might offend. We reserve the right to remove work from shows as needed.’ I had considered applying but, instead, wrote to the organisers to complain, received a ‘holding email’ and have heard nothing since. The prize was organised by The Crafts Council, the BBC, and the V&A. The Crafts Council is a QUANGO - now, I think a govt department - the V&A is also a QUANGO. These are not neutral spaces, their CEOs are government appointees. They also, apparently, see fit to make up laws when they feel like it. The result for artists is either to self censor, or stay out of it. I, along with a number of others, chose the latter.

iii) Harassment

Then there is ‘TERFs Out Of Art.’ This is a Twitter account. It is a network of some four thousand artworldists, about half of whom are professionals, some from major art galleries, museums, universities, and studios. Their followers include some well known writers and curators - people who can make or break you. They listed me as ‘verboten,’ within 24 hours of the launch. On top of that I was listed by Oxford Brookes University LGBT society as a ‘forbidden’ artist shortly after I had given a talk on the right to free expression in 2018…

What does it all mean? Why does it happen? Who benefits and from what?

In the art world ‘cancelling’ someone is a way of constructing networks and communities. – gangs, if you like. In large part, cancelling someone, and showing you've cancelled them, is a way to advance your career and, potentially, secure an income or even make some real money. Politics, especially the politics around equality of opportunity and advancement, has become thoroughly corrupted. These days, unfortunately, the words "diversity" and "intersectional," have lost most of their meaning if, indeed, they were ever fully understood. 

Who does the cancelling?

‘Cancel Culture,’ for artists rarely takes the same form as it does for journalists and academics. In my case it has been my work, rather than me, that has been ‘cancelled.’ 2019, the Crossbones Cemetery debacle is the exception - though for other artists, that is now becoming the rule. The ‘Shattered’ fiasco involved Bradford Metropolitan Council and Haringey Council so it is clear that the impulse to control and censor most often comes from organisations close to government. They are powerful. If you ignore Cancel Culture, and delude yourself that it is just and a few students and that the main source of complaint is from ‘the Tories’ or ‘racists’ or whoever your favourite target is, you leave yourself open to the same treatment. As you have seen, most of my experiences of cancellation have been motivated by ignorance, racism, and misogyny, not by knowledge, anti-racism, or feminism.

The Consequences

I have provided a snap shot of what 'Cancel Culture' is in action. For the artist, it is both demoralising and damaging. If you cannot show your work in public spaces, your career will eventually die. It never happens to the big people - Grayson Perry, for example, has never been cancelled. It only happens to those of us regarded as disposable - which suggests it is done so the canceller/censor can parade their own credentials to their target audience rather than any serious desire to protect their audiences from whatever they perceive as harmful. I do not believe for a second that any of these people really believed I was doing or saying anything harmful. They were appeasing something or someone they understand to be powerful or influential. The losses are significant for me though. Bit by bit the cancelled artist falls away from the artworld radar and becomes invisible. Both I and my work is perceived as troublesome and, contrary to a widely believed myth, the artworld seeks safety way ahead of creative risk. 

Edit 4th Jan 2022: I have now left the gallery that represented me from 2017-2021. There are many reasons but among is that I don't want to bring trouble to their door. This isn't altruism on my part, it is self interest. The situation for artists has heated up considerably over the past year and more and more female artists are coming forward having been hounded out of studios, dropped from exhibitions, excluded from selling sites such at Etsy, and deplatformed by universities. In spite of the heightened rhetoric, the majority of artworldists are still shockingly ignorant of the issues and are therefore wholly unequipped to fight the battles when they come. For this reason, I judge it is better to be independent for the time being. 





Suvivors and Fighters, 2021