Gender in Art. Body, sexuality, identity, resistance

16/10/2017

Showing: The Inauthenic Male

Curatorship: Aida Rechena e Teresa Furtado

Museums are not neutral places. On the contrary they seek answers to key questions. Gender as one of individuals’ identity dimensions is comprised in those questions.

Gender is a sociocultural construction of identity imposed by social norms with the aim of transforming people into women or men while having real consequences in their lives, namely in the access to wealth, prestige and power. But this construction of distinct gender roles is simultaneously a personal choice that results in a broad and fluid range of gender identities, such as heterosexuality, lesbianism, homosexuality, transsexuality, intersexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, among others, thus becoming an act of freedom, diversity and individual expression.

Gender is not something that people possess, but something that is being built every minute, continuously in all situations of daily life, in permanent interaction with others, in the way individuals think, communicate and act.

Body, sexuality, identity and resistance are the dimensions present in the daily construction of Gender that lead this exhibition. In an attempt to undo stereotypes regarding the understanding of Gender, the exhibition brings to the museum a reflection and debate on the Gender dimension, based on a set of works by Portuguese artists Alice Geirinhas, Ana Pérez-Quiroga, Ana Vidigal, Carla Cruz, Cláudia Varejão, Gabriel Abrantes, Horácio Frutuoso, João Gabriel, João Galrão, João Pedro Vale e Nuno Alexandre Ferreira, Maria Lusitano, Miguel Bonneville, Thomas Mendonça e Vasco Araújo.

See here