2020 Art Exhibition at Biennale della Fotografia Femminile

WOPHA / 09.09.2019

2020 Art Exhibition at Biennale della Fotografia Femminile

Women at Work: Cuba through the Female Lens

Open Call

Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) in collaboration with Biennale Della Fotografia Femminile launch an open call to participate in the exhibition Women at Work: Cuba through the Female Lens that takes place in the city of Mantova during March 5-8, 2020. This call is open exclusively to artists identified as women from any nationality with photo-based projects in Cuba. These projects shall explore the curatorial concept of the exhibition in a critical, reflexive, creative, and original way.

Among relevant themes for the exhibition are work paid or not, invisible work, sexual work, the problematization of gender roles in the labor context, contemporary forms of slavery, creative, occasional, institutional, and research work. It can be done out of need, pleasure, interest, despair or obligation. The images from this call will be chosen by a collaborators team of Women Photographers International Archive.

Curatorial Concept

How did photography evidence the construction of the “new woman” in the revolutionary Cuban imaginary? How did women represent themselves regarding the development of Socialist society? To what extent do artists question and reflect other realities outside the official discourse? Women at Work: Cuba through the Female Lens, features a heterogeneous group of emerging and master artists which photographs provide a glimpse into diverse stories crossed by gender, race, migration, and social class factors. Leftist feminists considered work as an important resource for women emancipation; that is, the insertion of women to the labor market would eliminate the oppression since the subordination of women is a consequence of cultural, not biological constructions. Although, women had access to a wide range of professions and leadership positions in Cuba; they continue subjugated in front of the invisibility of the domestic work, as well as, the legitimization of the heterosexual and patriarchal society.

Women at Work: Cuba through the Female Lens focuses on photo-based projects made by national and international women artists in Cuba from the sixties to the present. The exhibition is part of the initiatives of Catálogo de Fotógrafas Cubanas (Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers); it is a project-oriented to research and promote the contributions of women to modern and contemporary photography.

How to participate?

Send to info@wopha.org with “Biennale della Fotografia Femminile” as the email subject, a portfolio with one to three projects, between 8 and 20 images, in PDF format. Also, send your biography, project statement and the photographs’ technical description.

Conditions of Participation

• Applications must be submitted in English or Spanish.
• All work must be completed.
• All artists retain full ownership of their work.
• Women Photographers International Archive may use images only for promotional purposes of the artists, their work and the exhibition.

Selected women photographers will be notified on January 10, 2020.

Deadline: December 5, 2019.

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