Mimosa House presents the first chapter of transfeminisms, a major survey touring show, that brings to light a multiplicity of urgent, pressing and ongoing issues faced by women, queer and trans people across the globe. The first chapter (8 March–20 April 2024) will feature works by Zainab Fasiki, Kyuri Jeon, Alex Martinis Roe, Fatima Mazmouz, Ada Pinkston, Bahia Shehab and Lorena Wolffer.
Unfolding over five chapters throughout 2024 at Mimosa House, before touring to Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, USA, transfeminisms outlines strategies of resistance through propositions of collective action, care and radical imagination, in order to generate a more equitable future. The exhibition explores the lineage of feminist art practices by facilitating dialogue between emerging and more established artists, most of which are shown in the UK for the first time.
The title transfeminisms is deliberately provocative. The prefix “trans” implies ‘across, beyond, through, on the other side of’; while the ‘s’ in ‘feminisms’ recognises the innumerable definitions of feminism worldwide. Our intention is for transfeminisms to be understood within an inclusive and decolonial context – one that takes us across feminisms and encompasses various ‘trans’ possibilities.
The first chapter features artists whose work engages with political protest, in both public and private spheres, unpacking complexities related to freedom of speech, sexual and reproductive freedom, and struggles against state violence and Western colonisation.
Image: Installation view, transfeminisms, Mimosa House, 2024. Photo by Josef Konczak.
Curators
Christine Eyene, Daria Khan, Jennifer McCabe and Maura Reilly
Assistant Curators
Sandra Lam, Keshia Turley, Jessica Wan
Global Curatorial Advisors
Camille Auer, Giulia Casalini, Natasha Ginwala, Snejana Krasteva, Natalia Sielewicz, Gabriela Rangel, Lucía Sanromán, Olia Sosnovskaya, Stefanie Hessler, and Indira Ziyabek
transfeminisms is supported by
Lubaina Himid Projects
transfeminisms exhibition circle
Marcelle Joseph
Muriel Salem
Nayrouz Tatanaki
Mimosa House is supported by
Mimosa House Patrons
About the artists:
Zainab Fasiki (b. 1994, Fez, Morocco)
Zainab Fasiki is a mechanical engineer, who is also licensed as an illustrator and graphic novelist in Morocco. As an activist fighting for women’s rights and individual freedoms, Fasiki runs comic-strip workshops at universities and non-profits, both in Morocco and elsewhere. She is also the founder of the /WOMEN POWER/ collective, which invites female artists to participate in workshops helping to nurture the next generation of artists. In 2018 she won the Amnesty award for activists, and in 2022 she won the Bravery Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
The book [Hshouma], whose title roughly translates as “shame,” pairs the artist’s playful illustrations with discussions of sexuality, gender-based violence and censorship. “I want every Moroccan to read it because we have nothing on these topics at school or at home,” she says. “It’s a kind of guidebook.” - Time Magazine, 2019
Fasiki decided to become an artist and created the illustrated comic book and project Hshouma (shame), which aims to break taboos in Morocco, in particular to change the way women and her bodies are perceived in society. - UN WOMEN, 2021
Kyuri Jeon (b. 1990, South Korea)
Kyuri Jeon is an artist based in New York/Seoul. In the form of installation, video, and performance Jeon explores interconnectedness of language, gender, and identity manifested on the body through the lenses of transnational and intersectional perspectives.
Jeon’s work has been featured internationally at venues including MassArt Art Museum, MA, USA; The Institute of Contemporary Art, PA, USA; Artists’ Moving Image Festival, UK; Festival Film Dokumenter, Indonesia; Women Make Waves, Taiwan; and DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, South Korea. She holds BFA from Korea National University of Arts, and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and Seoul National University. She is a recipient of a Contemporary Visual Art Award at AHL-T&W Foundation and an award winner at Asian Shorts Competition, Seoul International Women’s Film Festival.
Alex Martinis Roe (b. 1982, Melbourne, Australia)
Alex Martinis Roe is an artist and researcher focussed on feminist genealogies, seeking to foster specific and productive relations between different generations as a way of participating in the construction of feminist histories and futures. This involves developing research and storytelling methodologies, which employ non-linear understandings of time, respond to the specific practices of different communities, experiment with the dispositives of discursive encounter, and imagine how these entanglements can inform new political practices.
She also explores these methodological concerns in collaboration with theorist Melanie Sehgal and a research group called FORMATIONS, which began in 2015 within the framework of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Work from her new research project Alliances (2018 - ongoing) has been exhibited at GfZK - Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig (solo, 2018) and in Fabriques de contre-savoirs, Frac Lorraine, Metz (2018).
Martinis Roe is a former fellow (2013-2016) of the Graduate School, University of the Arts Berlin and holds a PhD (2011) from Monash University, Melbourne. She is Head of Drawing and Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts and was the 2018 recipient of the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft [Future of Europe Art Prize].
Fatima Mazmouz (b. 1974, Casablanca, Morocco)
As a visual artist, Fatima Mazmouz defines herself as a perceptual artist (perception) before being conceptual. Between her exhibitions, her performances photographed in many countries, she has made her body a real subject and medium for artistic reflection. Photography has transformed her carnal envelope into political territory. In it, she explores the multiple dimensions of the image in an "action trance" between anthropological research and narrative, intimate, family fiction where her body becomes the substantial reservoir of past and future memory archives.
The whole of her artistic production is entitled LES VENTRES DU SILENCE and is grouped into five corpus: EX ODE, the migrant body, SUPER OUM, the bandaging body, HYSTERA, PETIT MUSÉE DE L'UTERUS, the broken body, CASABLANCA MON AMOUR, the colonial body and finally DES MONTS ET MÈRES VEILLENT, the magical body which, through the path of deconstruction, invests themes such as Discrimination, Feminism, Postcolonial, Memory and (the rewriting of) History, Orality. She examines the relations of power and domination that they induce, as well as the field of imaginaries that run through them in a permanent dialogue between the intimate and the political, the individual and the collective.
Fatima Mazmouz has exhibited in numerous events and institutions: Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie de Bamako (2005), Festival International de la Photographie à Arles (2006), Institut du Monde Arabe (2014), Dak'art Biennial (2016), Centro Atlantico Arte Moderno (2017), Grandes Halles de la Villette (2017), Paris Photo (2018), Stedelijk Museum (2019), Les Abattoirs de Toulouse (2021), Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castillo - Valencia (2022), MUCEM Museum of Mediterranean Civilization (2024).
Ada Pinkston (b. 1983, New York, USA)
Ada Pinkston is an African-American multimedia artist, educator, and cultural organizer. Her art explores the intersection of imagined histories and sociopolitical realities on our bodies, using monoprint, performance, video, and collage. Inter-subjective exchanges are the primary substrate of her work.
Over the years, her work has been featured at a variety of spaces, including The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, The Walters Art Museum, The Peale Museum, Transmodern Performance Festival, P.S.1, The New Museum, Light City Baltimore, and the streets of Berlin. She is a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow (2018), Baker Artist award semifinalist (2016); a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Grit Fund Grant in Visual Arts, administered by The Contemporary (2017); and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby’s Project Grant in Visual Arts in (2017). In addition to her studio practice, she is a co-founder of the LabBodies Performance Art Laboratory in Baltimore, Maryland. She is currently a lecturer in Art Education at Towson University.
Bahia Shehab (b. 1977, Beirut, Lebanon)
Bahia Shehab is an Egyptian multidisciplinary artist, designer, political activist and historian based in Cairo. Her work focuses on the interaction and intersection of modern identity and ancient cultural heritage. Her imaginative combination of calligraphy and Islamic art history produced cutting edge, beautiful, impactful street art during the Arab Spring and continues to inform her work as an educator and designer. Having always been concerned with identity and preserving cultural heritage, she investigates art history to reinterpret contemporary Arab politics, feminist discourse and social issues. Her culturally oriented work enables her to use history as a means to better understand the present and find solutions for the future.
Bahia holds the position of Professor of Design and is the founder of the graphic design program at The American University in Cairo. Internationally recognized, she frequently lectures on Arab visual culture, design education, peaceful protest, and Islamic cultural heritage. Her artwork has been showcased in exhibitions, galleries, and streets across over 30 cities, earning her numerous international recognitions and awards, such as a TED Senior Fellowship, inclusion in the BBC 100 Women list, and the prestigious Prince Claus Award. She is the first Arab woman to receive the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. Shehab is also the founding director of Type Lab@AUC. Her publications include "You Can Crush the Flowers: A Visual Memoir of the Egyptian Revolution," "At The Corner of a Dream," "A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Alif," and the award winning co-authored book "A History of Arab Graphic Design."
Lorena Wolffer (b. 1971, Mexico City, Mexico)
Lorena Wolffer is an artist and cultural activist. She has broadly presented her work in Mexico and internationally. She has also produced, facilitated, and curated dozens of projects with numerous artists in platforms such as museums, public spaces, and television She has conducted classes, workshops, diploma courses, and lectures at dozens of art spaces, museums, universities, and institutions, and her writings have been published in magazines, newspapers, and books.
She currently coordinates DISIDENTA: Comunidad de práctica social + saberes feministas with Cerrucha and María Laura Rosa. Wolffer was a member of the Parlamento de Mujeres de la Ciudad de México (2019); Coordinator for Social Practice and Interventions at the Laboratorio Nacional Diversidades (UNAM-CONACyT) (2017); Academic Coordinator of Arte, cultura y justicia: representaciones y performatividades alternas for the Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género, UNAM (2011); advisor to the Coordinación de Difusión Cultural of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2004-2007); and co-founder and director of Ex-Teresa Arte Alternativo of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (1994-1996), all in Mexico City.
She has been the recipient of the Hermila Galindo Medal (Mexico City Congress, Mexico City, 2019), the Artraker Award for Social Impact (England, 2014), Commended Artist of Freedom to Create (Singapore, 2011) and the Omecíhuatl Medal granted by Inmujeres DF (Mexico City, 2011), among other grants and prizes.