The Ladies Have the Floor: dialogues on the inclusion of women in visual arts

This book is part of a collection of archives created through the project Atelier como espaço de conversa (The studio as a place for dialogue). The project, awarded funding by the Prêmio Funarte Mulheres nas Artes Visuais 2013 (Funarte Prize for Women in Visual Arts), consists in creating multiple interfaces to further dialogue on the place women occupy in the contemporary visual arts world, particularly in Brazil. The interviews gathered here, elaborated by Isabel Waquil, seek to promote first person speech for women working in different professions in the art community, creating a primary source for new research. We have sought to compile diverse accounts of the system, presenting personal and collective experiences that transverse the daily life of artists, curators, critics, managers and, also, women. The book also gathers information on the process of managing independent spaces, projects and experiences in curatorship and teaching, all while contemplating gender issues with a feminist and post-feminist perspective of their artistic and theoretical works. (extract from Introduction article written by artist Lilian Maus)

The book also served as impulse to the project Women In Contemporary Art – A.I.R. Gallery. The project consisted in a research about the first women’s cooperative gallery in United States, A.I.R., with interviews with its members and documental research.