Transart alum & advisor Syowia Kyambi in exhibition in Valletta, Malta
The Ordinary Lives of Women
Kaspale's Playground, Syowia Kyambi. Photo Documentation by Lindsey Bahia
The rhetoric around feminism often focuses on the achievement of individual women, in an effort to justify their equality with men through the accomplishments of a small number of talented individuals. This necessary celebration of individual breakthroughs leaves little space in which to acknowledge the value of everyday women, going about their daily lives.
In general, women’s contribution to humanity - whether extraordinary, or very ordinary - are barely acknowledged, let alone celebrated. Women make up half of the world’s population; their struggles are the world’s struggles, and since women often take on the role of care-givers, their realities reflect the realities of most of the world’s inhabitants (in 2017 the share of women in the world was 49.6%)1. Of these, most women earn less than their male counterparts, have less access to work, and are less represented politically 2.
With this exhibition, we attempt to ‘normalise’ the lives of women, to acknowledge the value of ordinary lives lived, without justifying, trophyising or aggrandising. We attempt to examine the polities and realities around women’s (and thus the world’s) ‘ordinary’ lives. We acknowledge the trillions of woman-hours that are spent daily around the world in undervalued tasks of cleaning, caring and maintenance; these unrecognised responsibilities - which are most often born by women - are here placed centre-stage. We engage an archival lens in order to see these lives in a historical perspective, as well as within a socio-political context, to see them in contrast with exalted monuments and achievements which tend to dominate the world’s narratives (and which have long been male- centered).
The exhibition also recognises that ‘ordinary’ women have been pushed to extraordinary acts when their rights and lives - and those of their societies - have come under threat. When circumstances dictate, women emerge from their traditional domestic roles to adopt a revolutionary, protective or investigative responsibility, often becoming defenders of loved ones, and of other women and sisters. Caring here becomes a revolutionary or political act in itself, in direct opposition to a value-extraction economy of production and rentability.
This resistance is not always immediate or overtly revolutionary, nor do women limit their efforts to the domestic realm; women artists have worked to defend oppressed populations and particular individuals. This political struggle can be continued by ensuring that facts and narratives are not distorted or consigned to oblivion. The art work thus becomes a kind of archive; one which recognises the ordinary lives of women as much as the post-colonial and nationalist forces.
Finally, we acknowledge the exhibition’s geographical context; an island in the Mediterranean, facing universal as well as local realities in terms of women’s rights.
1 https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio
2 https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality
Syowia presented Kaspale’s Playground, which she developed as part of her MFA final project at Transart in 2020.
Kaspale’s Playground revisits Kenya’s recent history, bringing to the fore the many layers of violence that underpinned former President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi’s 24-year rule. The work claims both the remembering and the telling of this history in ways that are not mediated by a supposed shared national memory.
This installation-performance may include some adult themes which might not be suitable for younger audiences.
Space A, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta
Curators
Elise Billiard Pisani & Margerita Pulè
Artists
Florinda Camilleri, Abigail Agius, Charlie Cauchi, Edith Dekyndt, Katel Delia, Rachel Fallon, Syowia Kyambi, Julieta Gil, Fatima Mazmouz & Francesca Saraullo
Collaborators
Unfinished Art Space, Brazza Art Residency, Art+Feminism & Wikimedia Community Malta
Supported by
APS Bank, Arts Council Malta, Melita Foundation, Embassy of France in Malta & Embassy of Ireland in Malta