Lost Legacies, Found Voices: The Art World’s Reckoning
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You know that feeling, when someone really sees you, not just looks at you, but sees you? It’s like something inside quietly clicks into place. It is a quiet alchemy; something intangible, yet powerful. When light catches a face, when a name is spoken, when a long-buried story rises to the surface. Visibility is not just about being looked at; it is about claiming space, about history taking shape in real time. Read more in Lost Legacies, Found Voices: The Art World’s Reckoning
Image on the left-hand side: ‘Soft and Strong’ by Tabitha Boekweit
And yet, many think our history has a habit of erasing, of casting certain figures in marble and others into shadow. If you walk through the great halls of art institutions, you see the pattern is unmistakable. Portraits of power, of influence, of genius, overwhelmingly depict men. The world of art, though curated by many women, has long been dominated by the stories men tell about themselves.
‘Her’ by Tabitha Boekweit
But genius is rarely solitary. Often, it is scaffolded by networks, nurtured in collaboration. There have been men, curators, critics, and collectors who used their platforms to champion forgotten or silenced women. Art historian Alfred Barr, founding director of MoMa, was among the first to include women like Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo in major exhibitions, even if his vision wasn’t always consistent.
More recently, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has consistently amplified female voices, from pioneering conceptualists to emerging names. Their efforts matter, not because they validate women’s work, but because they help dismantle the myth that value is bestowed from above, rather than forged in community.
The deeper issue lies not in individual men but in the scaffolding that upholds them. Institutions steeped in colonial legacies, galleries beholden to market forces, and a canon shaped by exclusion. Visibility, in this sense, is a form of resistance.
It is not only about inclusion, but interrogation; who decides what is worth preserving? Whose gaze determines value? The Guerrilla Girls have long asked these questions, holding up a mirror to an industry that still too often confuses equity with tokenism. Calling out museums, collectors, and curators on their biases with biting wit and fearless activism.
Guerrilla Girls – V&A Museum, London – Image by Eric Huybrechts
Their 2020 exhibition, ‘The Art of Behaving Badly’, served as both a retrospective and a wake-up call, a reminder that progress is not self-sustaining. While institutions work to rebalance representation, the question remains: Who else has been left in the dark, waiting for their moment in the light?
At the Centre Pompidou, ‘Women in Abstraction’ (2021) reframed modernism itself, revealing how artists like Sonia Delaunay, Lee Krasner, and Hilma af Klint broke boundaries in colour, form, and movement. Their experiments, once dismissed or overshadowed, were integral to abstraction’s evolution, proof that the avant-garde was never a singular, male-driven vision.
Similarly, Tate Modern’s ‘Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian’ (2023) placed a long-overdue spotlight on a woman whose spiritual, swirling composition predated even the most revered modernist canvases. No longer an anomaly, af Klint was finally acknowledged as an essential force in shaping abstract art.
‘Seer’ by Tabitha Boekweit
But visibility stretches beyond galleries and oil on canvas. Across disciplines, women are reimagining how we see, hear, and feel. The South African photographer Zanele Muholi refers to themselves as a “visual activist,” capturing Black LGBTQIA+ lives in tender, defiant portraits that reclaim presence. Nan Goldin’s intimate lens offers a counter-narrative to the sanitised, masculine myth of New York’s art scene, while Cindy Sherman uses disguise to destabilise the gaze altogether.
In music, artists like Laurie Anderson and Björk fuse sound, sculpture, and story, bending genres and expectations with each new project. Anderson’s work is part performance, part meditation, often exploring loss and memory through experimental soundscapes.
Björk builds entire worlds with her music, unafraid of alien textures or emotional maximalism. More recently, FKA Twigs has sculpted a singular language out of movement, voice, and digital distortion, a multi-sensory reclamation of self.
Writers, too, wield visibility like a tool. Chris Kraus’ ‘I Love Dick’ blurred the lines between criticism and confession, forcing the literary world to contend with a woman’s intellectual and erotic hunger. Audre Lorde, ever the seer, once wrote: “Your silence will not protect you.” Her essays and poems continue to teach us that voice is a form of survival.
Across the arts, a pattern emerges; not of a unified style, but a shared urgency. These women are not simply filling gaps in the archive; they are reshaping it. Whether through image, word, or sound, they refuse to wait for permission. They create in spite of invisibility, not because they seek visibility. And in doing so, they leave trails for others to follow.
At the Dutch Centre in London, these ideas took form in a conversation. A panel discussion, tied to the exhibition of artist Tabitha Boekweit, explored the shifting landscape of women’s equality in the arts. The event brought together voices from across different worlds, including Frigeri herself, alongside powerful women in other fields, each dissecting the weight of visibility.
Tabitha Boekweit, of Moluccan descent and raised in the Netherlands, knows the weight of representation intimately. Her mother and grandmother, towering figures in her life, shaped not only her identity but her work. The Moluccan experience, a complex, often overlooked history within Dutch society, finds echoes in her art.
Her works ‘Eve and Ezer’ are more than paintings; they are statements, vibrant, colourful, and brimming with power. ‘Eve’ evokes the life-giving force embedded in her name, drawing from the biblical archetype of the first woman, the source of all creation. ‘Ezer’, in particular, embodies a warrior’s resilience, a testament to strength passed through generations.
‘Eve and Ezer’ by Tabitha Boekweit
These works transcend mere representation, fusing bold colours and dynamic forms to encapsulate the essence of female power, rooted in both the past and the future, reminding us of the vital, unbreakable force that women have always held.
To be seen is to matter. To be framed, recorded, remembered; an act of defiance against erasure. The art world, like all worlds, is built on stories. And the more women who take up space in those stories, the fuller, richer, and truer our collective history becomes.
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