AMSTERDAM.- Marian Cramer Projects is presenting Femocracy – The Divine Feminine with Victoria Adam, Güler Ates, Lise Haller Baggesen, Annabel Emson and Michelle McKeown.

In ‘Democracy Begins Between Two’ (2000), Luce Irigaray (Belgium) invites us to rethink democracy and construct a new civil code invested with the genio femminile (the female spirit).

‘Until the relationship between man and woman has changed, the desire to dominate nature, not only cosmos and women’s nature but equally the nature of young people, of other races, and citizens of their countries, will remain unchanged.’(2000, Irigaray)

McKeown’s most recent rorschach works for Femocracy – The Divine Feminine seek to establish painting emphatically as an inter-subjective encounter, rupturing traditional representations of women in an attempt to forge new relations with man, woman, nature, world and other.

Güler Ates’ work comments on the Western notion of Orientalism and the effects of the cross-pollination of cultures on female identity and architecture. In her work she questions the relationship between the veil and the West, by setting the female veiled figure within a lush or historic European interior. Ates will be presenting new work made recently at Oude Kerk Amsterdam.

In the past years Lise Haller Baggesen has been working mainly on two bodies of work regarding Female Genius and Feminist Utopias, namely MOTHERNISM and HATORADE RETROGRADE.

MOTHERNISM (2013-) is a book and nomadic audio installation, aiming to stake out the “mother-shaped hole” in contemporary art discourse, at the intersection of Feminism, Sci-Fi and Disco. If the proverbial Mother is perhaps perceived as a persona non grata in the art world, because her nurturing nature is at odds with the hyperbolic ideal of the singular artistic genius, MOTHERNISM amplifies her presence, channeling her energy, complexity, and sublime creative potential in a series of intimate and critical reflections. The resulting collection of letters dedicated with love from one mother to her dear daughter, sister, mother, and reader—fuse biography, music, art, and history into an auto-theoretical testimony that recalls and redefines the future imperfect.

Since it’s inception MOTHERNISM has toured North America and Europe and also served as the “mother-ship” for the academic colloquium “Mapping the Maternal: Art, Ethics, and the Anthropocene” at the University of Alberta, earlier this year.

The book was co-published by Green Lantern Press & Poor Farm Press in 2014, and is available through SPD books:

HATORADE RETROGRADE (2016-) debuted at Chicago’s Threewalls/Rational Park in May 2016 and was received with an Art Forum Critics pick by Matt Morris. It features a selection of sartorial works set against a backdrop of revisionist “lipstick formalist” paintings to present a dystopian vision of the US anno 2033. In this glimmering post-capitalist burnout we must learn to make-do-and-mend, to repurpose art for art’s sake, and perhaps to forgive –but not forget– certain moments in the past when we were all hitting the Hatorade a little too hard. HATORADE RETROGRADE paints a bleak but hilarious picture of our shared predicament: on the intersectional battlefield we traverse there is no one-size-fits-all body armor, yet we cannot let our guards down post-feminism, until we arrive at post-gynophobia.

Annabel Emson will be showing paintings about the feminine in relation to Jung’s writings on the feminine and masculine, and work based on the writing of Gaston Bachelard and his reference to the feminine and water.

Finding something beyond politics, beyond opinion, beyond separation and judgement, a place where all is, and all is well is what excites Emson about painting. Matter just forming and transforming. This pure state is the ecstasy of the artist.

Victoria Adam has created new work for Amsterdam Art Weekend beyond politics beyond opinion. Adam makes sculptures intended to be experienced close-up and will present 3 small sculptures infused with herbal blends of both a real and cognitive variety. Each evokes a specific feeling from a combination of ingredients, smells and tactile familiarity.

Lise Haller Baggesen is based in Chicago and all other artists live and work in London