Despite how much intersectionality has been thought, written, and spoken about, as with the coloniality of museums, we are still socialised into heteronormative, racist, classist, sexist subjectivities in our day to day. Whilst phones and TV constantly bombard us with information and social scripts, just a stroll through a national gallery is enough to be surprised by the number of paintings of similar-looking, rich, white women in white dresses. It is interesting to note that social media such as Instagram censor nipples when you can see so many in a National Gallery.
The lack of visibility and representation of forms of being that divert from “the norm” (if by normative we mean white supremacist imperialist patriarchy) is a usual sight in most museums throughout Europe. The coloniality of museums has been thoroughly exposed and denounced, with many opting to be included in decolonisation programs and strategies that face similar structural barriers for actual change and dislocation of power that diversity and inclusion do, as explained by Angela Davis in this video.
For example, whilst most of these depictions of whiteness and femininity were painted by men, if the person that painted them identified as a woman yet kept that sexualised yet innocent-looking depiction, what would change? Dressed in white dresses or naked with just a white cloth, as seen in the painting below, these depictions continue to haunt us with “beauty standards” crafted by men long dead.
In contrast to solutions that work within a racist, classist, sexist, ableist and heteronormative epistemology, abolition feminists such as Gina Dent and Beth Richie (out of many) have been calling for a shift in subjectivities instead. Following their lead, this brief article explores what and how we are subconsciously socialised by the interrelation between whiteness and femininity as interpellated through paintings.
This is not to claim that whiteness and femininity are mutually constituted, but rather a critique of universalising claims and of further naturalising the performances and social constructs of both whiteness and femininity. Open to a pluriverse of ways of being, I examine the role of national galleries in being socialised into a specific mode of existence at the expense of erasing, exploiting, and extracting life. Hence, this article briefly explores said socialisation through the paintings exposed in National Galleries. The one below, found in the Shaw room in Ireland, aids in denaturalising discourses of progress and constructions of being, showcasing a narrative similar to Edward Said’s findings in Orientalism.
The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife. Painting by Daniel Maclise
This was painted from a colonial English perspective, “portraying the Anglo-Normans as strong and technologically advanced, while the Irish fighters were thought of as wild and uncontrollable”, as stated as the description of the painting by the gallery itself. Added to the violent primitive/civilised binary depiction, the light in the painting is mostly on the women. On the left, we can see another white woman in a white dress with her arms raised. The victimisation of her representation falls within the broader trend of euro-centric understandings of the nation as a female needing protection. To quote article 41.2.1 from the Irish constitution: "By her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved". Under this lens, the concept of whiteness and the invention of “woman” can be tied to the nation-state, where the not so innocent victim role shifts if we see her body as the literal nation producing its soldiers. As Silvia Federici stated in Caliban and the Witch, Women, the body, and primitive accumulation, the relation between capitalist extraction and primitive accumulation enforced on the uterus can be drawn.
A poignant example of white patriarchal supremacy today that reflects the pertinence of the unthinking and rethinking of the subjectivities imposed by said representations can be seen by the response of European states, NATO, the USA, or what is so often referred to as “the West” in the media, to the war in Ukraine, going from accepting (white) Ukrainian refugees to now Germany accepting Russian dissidents. Whilst it is amazing to see how fake borders are, and how we can all help each other in times of need, it is a striking response when so many people are murdered at, and by borders every day. Why is it that people live, have human rights worth protecting and fighting for, yet the people on the move to the Spanish colonies of the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla in Africa die attempting to cross? This is just one example of the many localities in which the stark difference between life and death is reduced to a paper- a passport, ID- to a matter of nationality. Do the lives of these people matter less because they are not in the national galleries?
Whilst a racial lens is critical when understanding the extent of the disposability of life, especially given the current media discourse, it is crucial to not further naturalise race, alongside gender and sex as social constructs. Capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy can then be traced back rather than taken as a given dynamic.
Instead, museums craft a false sense of historical continuity, with for example literally white-washing Ancient Greek- style sculptures that were originally colourful. Following bell hook’s conceptualisation of “Imperialist White Supremacist Heteropatriarchy”, this article briefly examined the constructions of these subjectivities through the intersection of femininity and whiteness as performances. Not to say a performance of femininity is inherently performing whiteness, but to highlight how when walking through a National gallery in Europe or the U.S., one might not immediately think that the paintings they are looking at are subliminally, subconsciously, socialising you into existence, one from which then it is easy to support a war against Russia whilst ignoring the ongoing “war” against life.
Frederick Sandys' Gentle Spring (1865)
As a brief opinion piece, informed by existing work that has already said everything I have here, I ask, how can we think collectively about art museums as a form of violence? Extractive, and a coercive method of behavioural change, in which we are absorbing an unasked-for point of view, that presents itself as having no point of view, as reality, objective. A mirage. This violently excludes people by setting a standard of what is “normal”.
But just as with boobs, the normal is not full, perky, pink nipples. Where are the hairy nipples? The normal is different, an infinite pluriverse of shapes, sizes, colours, and textures -it just is. Weary of the function of these galleries in patriarchal nation building projects that are part of a discourse that relies on the idea of one nation, one ethnicity, one culture, creating the social construct of “minorities” and the sub-normal and leads to extreme forms of violence. Ending with the words of Lola Olufemi in Feminism Interrupted, page 88:
“While it is crucial that we remain critical of how the sexist logics of capitalism are implicated in our self-image, we must also remember that rejecting femininity does not equal liberation. Women are not oppressed because of the existence of makeup or high heels or hair removal strips; these are merely by-products of a sexist society. This kind of thinking stems from a type of feminism that argues that women can escape sexist oppression by ‘degendering’ or refusing traditional femininity. While this approach opens our eyes to the fact that femininity is a construct that serves male dominance, opting for gender neutrality often means adopting a universalised masculinity. Baggy shirts and suits do not equal liberation either. Liberation cannot be ushered in by what we wear or how we speak or how we present ourselves. When we focus on the individual, we are asking the wrong question.”
Lawrence MacDonald (1799-1878), Eurydice, 1837,Room 46
Great article 😍