Cultural perspectives on feminism, in art and words, from 9 women artists:

Lucilda Dessardo-Cooper, painting, Jamaica
Benita Elliott, photograpy, USA
Margarita Fragnito, sculpture, Argentina
Teresa Ghiglino , collage, Peru
Cathy Katona, photography, USA
Kathy Keler, hand-worked digital prints, USA(born in Hungary)
Elena Maza, painting, Cuba
Yolanda Prinsloo-Philips, oil on canvas, South Africa
Annu Ratta, ceramic and mixed media, India

For details please see our website www.washingtonart.net
For Further Information contact Annu Ratta at 202-265-2279

The Global Palette of Feminism

We are a group of international women artists based in Washington, DC, who bring our different cultural contexts into our art.

We present our work while relating it to our personal and cultural views on feminism. We hope that the collection will bring out the diversity of views on feminism in cultural context. This is an ongoing project to which we hope to keep adding new voices and views.

Some of the art in the group is directly feminist while in other works feminine strength and ideals appear in more subtle ways, revealing our feminist ideals through the language of our art.

As independent, itinerant women who have left our cultural bases in a globalized world, all of us have strong, independent, individual senses of feminism. We are all strong amazons, but our strength comes from our feminine virtues honed in our different cultures. What we would like to give the world is strong, equal women who can balance out the male and westernized values in the world, and not women who see being "male" as the way to be equal.

In our different cultural contexts we have seen very different levels of liberty as women, definitions of female roles, concepts of feminine and feminism, sources of power, and sources of equality. There are inequalities that anger us and we lash out at them through our art, but there are also sources of strength, power and equality that our cultures provide to women, which we would like to bring to the world.

What we aim at is to build a tapestery of the diversity of our views. We feel that as a part of the community of women fighting for equality in the world we have a common goal and different approaches to achieving it. In a globalizing world where ideas are driven disproportionately by the west, we would like the voices of our cultures and women to be heard. There are many at the conference putting forth these voices. We want to add another voice in a different language-- with the colors of our palettes.

Artists' Info :

Lucilda Dessardo Cooper / Benita Elliott / Cathy Katona /
Kathy Keler / Yolanda Prinsloo-Philips / Annu Ratta /
Margarita Fragnito / Teresa Ghiglino

exhibit statement and list of works	Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper The bright Tropical sun of her Caribbean years has heavily influenced her art, resulting in intense colors with a translucent gem-like quality.
exhibit statement and list of works	Benita Elliott creates images that are metaphoric, philosophic, comedic, sexual, provocative, quiet, honest, fantasy invoking. Images that are no less a record of that which is overlooked every day, often with indifference. Seeds of cultural, creative and political awareness.
exhibit statement and list of works	Margarita Fragnito finds delight in the marks that human beings leave in time and space. With every brushstroke that slides on the finite space of her canvas she paints a timeless landscape to honor, reveal and recognize in herself the anima mundo.
exhibit statement and list of works	Teresa Ghiglino explores and combines different disciplines such as drawing, photomontage, and installation. She recycles images of children, teens, ethnic cultures, and far away landscapes.
exhibit statement and list of works	Cathy Katona incorporates photography into her travels. Her work presents individuals in their daily lives, making the individual come first and then the culture.
exhibit statement and list of works	Kathy Keler Through her work she often finds herself exploring the paradoxical nature of power. She feels this is a theme she can choose as a painter, but one one that imposes itself, unbidden, in the lives of most women.
exhibit statement and list of works	Yolanda Prinsloo-Philips Works primarily in oil on canvas or panel and watercolour on paper. In this body of work entitled, “ Tapestries of My Life” she fuses together the seamstress traditions of the women in her family with her desire for healing among people, especially the people of South Africa.
exhibit statement and list of works	Annu Ratta Her work is directly aimed at promoting a “heartical” revolution in the world. She wants to make little public temples to creativity and to the spirit--spaces of peace and inspiration for people of open hearts that function on love and soulfulness rather than money, power and ego.