Image versus self The title of the exhibition She Me will mean different things to each visitor. One visitor might read sexual relationships into it, another might see the judging looks so common between women, and yet another might think of family relationships, friendships or self-image. The works in the exhibition She Me vary from the intimate drawings of Karin Arink and polaroids of Carmen de Vos, the vivid images of Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti and the transgressive works of Risk Hazekamp, Silvia B. or Meike Martijn, to the mysterious monumental portraits of Anouk Griffioen and Annemarieke van Drimmelen and the fairy-tale worlds of Karin Bos or Anya Janssen. However varied the approach and strategy may be, each of the works reveals the extent to which the representation of women is subject to many different associations, expectations and traditions. And when visitors see the exhibition, the title She Me will take on a new, critical significance, as further inspection of some of the works will reveal. After all, to what extent does the representation of women, the image of femininity, determine the individual identity? Gender In the two-part photo series Giant, Risk Hazekamp (born in The Hague in 1972) has captured her own image in rugged denim clothing. The first photo was taken in 2001 and shows her against the backdrop of an equally rugged and rocky landscape. The second photo, from 2009, was taken during summer in a rolling field of grain, beneath a sky of dramatic grey rain-filled clouds. Her pose, exactly the same in both photos, suggests that she is glancing back over her shoulder while walking, like an alert predator out hunting. The yellow glow of the afternoon sun casts sharp shadows on her face, throwing her angular jawline into sharp relief. Almost literally, Risk Hazekamp is imitating the stereotypical image of masculinity, as we know it from icons such as the 'Marlboro Man' or James Dean. In the photo Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion from 2009, Hazekamp once again depicts herself in a stereotypical pose, this time that of a model in a fashion magazine: her left hand is resting on her thigh, making her torso twist elegantly and shifting the emphasis to her hips and breasts. This time she is looking directly at the camera, although with an expression which is more reminiscent of her pose in Giants than the seductive glance you find in the world of high fashion. See Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion and the question immediately arises: why is Risk Hazekamp not feminine? However hard she tries, in both the stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity, Hazekamp seems a strange intruder. Hazekamp's work was influenced by the 1990 book Gender Trouble by the philosopher Judith Butler, which caused a radical shift in the way we think about masculinity and femininity. Butler built on Simone de Beauvoir's famous statement 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman', in which she argued that 'the body, the sexual life, and the resources of technology exist concretely for man only in so far as he grasps them in the total perspective of his existence'.(1) Butler also based her theories not on the biological differences between men and women, but on the idea of the social and political construction of gender and sexuality. Under the influence of post-structuralist philosophy, Butler argued that a fixed female 'gender identity' does not exist. She focused instead on the constantly changing cultural and political structures within which concepts such as masculinity and femininity are interpreted.(2) Another striking image is Risk Hazekamp's photo Under Influence / Catherine Opie (2007), in which she refers directly to a piece by the photographer Catherine Opie (born in Sandusky in 1961) from 1993. In this photo, the corpulent artist poses naked with her back to the camera. In the skin of her upper back, a drawing has been scored in a childlike hand, showing an idyllic scene of a house, a cloud with the sun peeking out behind it and two women holding hands. Hazekamp also photographed herself topless, with her back to the viewer. A bare breast can just be seen. Her face is turned to one side, revealing heavy beard growth. In an almost self-evident image, she is showing herself as someone who combines both male and female qualities in one person. The word 'Normal' has been scratched into the skin of her bare back in bloody letters. Irrevocable doubts arise in the mind of the viewer: are we looking at a man or a woman? Does the title refer to the influence of Catherine Opie, or the compelling influence of generally applicable norms? After all, the image which she reveals of herself simply fails to fit into any of the known templates. Deconstruction The same kind of doubt forms the basis of the work of Silvia B. (born in Rotterdam in 1962). Her sculptures are fashioned from mannequins; they are women without an identity and with ideal proportions, who are completely defined by the clothes they are wearing. With a few powerful interventions, she lends disturbing significance to these 'empty' figures. For example, the leather skin of the body of Almost Perfect (2004) is sewn together like an item of clothing, artificially arranged to form a whole. The face is modelled from separate pieces of leather stitched together to form the female ideal of full lips and large almond-shaped eyes. However, the body is androgynous and immature, the budding breasts combined with male genitals. In an interview, Silvia B. said: 'I love that kind of ambiguity, doubt is a great state of being, the starting point of all thinking. I see it as a sign of the times: room for androgyny in people, new scientific developments like genetic manipulation, cosmetic surgery and artificial intelligence'.(3) In the figure Leila, Silvia B. also represents the political connotations of the body. The piece once again involves a mannequin, in an elegant seated pose with long black hair and sandals with high stiletto heels. Her skin is completely covered in tattoos. The hands, forearms and feet have Arabic henna tattoos, while the skin which would normally be concealed by clothing is decorated with traditional Western indigo blue tattoos. She is loosely holding a machine gun wrapped in a silk stocking. The title refers to the Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled (born in Haifa in 1944), who hijacked an American plane in 1969. The photo in which she posed with a Palestinian scarf and a machine gun made Khaled a global icon of the Palestinian struggle, terrifying and attractive at the same time. Shortly afterwards, she had plastic surgery to remodel her face so she would escape detection during a second attempt, but also to avoid spending the rest of her life as the 'pin-up of armed response'.(4) In Silvia B.'s sculpture, the associations of fashion, beauty and sexuality therefore vie with those of tradition, religion and war. Silvia B. undermines the stereotypical image of femininity, in the process revealing the cultural and political structures which influence this image. Stereotypical images of femininity, as Butler also argues, do not refer to a fixed reality, but arise from a 'repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.'(5) By disrupting the image, as Silvia B. and Risk Hazekamp each do in their own way, the stereotypical image is 'deconstructed'. This gives rise to confusion in the viewer; the various associations and references do not combine to form a coherent image of femininity. As Silvia B. herself states: 'The process of forming an obvious judgement is disrupted, it could still go in any direction or preferably fail, which forces us to reconsider'. Identity The paintings, drawings, collages and installations of Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti (born in Tangier in 1978) reveal the extent to which the manifestation of the female body can be subject to political influence. In an installation of four paintings entitled Komm zu uns (2009), produced by Ahalouch during a stay in Berlin, she combines various aspects of German history with a vivid pictorial language which is reminiscent of comic strips or advertising drawings. The circus tent in the largest work invites the viewer to step inside. Combined with the words 'Komm zu uns' in Gothic script on a second work, a propaganda slogan of the Hitler Youth, an association with Nazi Germany and the underlying manipulation of the masses is created. The two other paintings depict a gruesome world in which sensual women adopt acrobatic erotic poses against the compelling black and white backdrop which refers to the circus tent in which we find ourselves. The women are faceless sex symbols, and the shapes of their bodies merge smoothly with the abstract decorative backdrop. It makes the women's bodies empty and lacking in identity, as decorative as the backdrop against which they are portrayed. These four paintings form part of the larger installation Circus Kitty, which also gave rise to the performance A Small Show in the Greatest Show in the World (2010). With the title, Ahalouch is referring to the 1976 film Salon Kitty by Tinto Brass, about the true story of Kitty Schmidt's brothel in which prostitutes received Nazis as clients, but at the same time were also spying for this same Nazi party. Fascinated by the complex entanglement of power, sex, suspicion and betrayal within the Nazi party, Ahalouch immersed herself in the women who worked there. Their lives were directly opposed to the Nazi ideal of the diligent young woman being crammed by the party for life as a housewife and mother. The female body, in all its different manifestations, became the focal point of the complex and corrupted political power structures in Nazi Germany. Not without good reason does Ahalouch use the circus Ð a place which simply offers entertainment for the masses Ð as the backdrop for her installation, and harlequins and jesters often appear in her work as symbols of manipulation and deceit. The installation may perhaps depict an extreme example from an extreme period in Western history. However, as Ahalouch says, 'For me, this is actually a metaphor for today, a time in which power politics holds sway and the people appear to blindly follow what populists and power-hungry people are shouting and screaming'. And indeed, the current political climate, which purposefully focuses on division and contrasts in society, also appears to benefit from stereotypes and simplifications with a far-reaching effect on image formation. Strict ideas develop about what it means to be Dutch, a Muslim, a woman, a politician or even an artist. And who says that, if we are confronted with these simplistic images often enough, we will not start to behave accordingly? The title of the exhibition She Me refers to this problem of the close entanglement of images of femininity with the 'self', the individual identity. In all the works by female artists which have been brought together in the exhibition, the body plays a central role. Sometimes the body features in the form of self-portraits, but equally often the body is a visual element which refers to (art) history, popular visual culture or political reality. It is not only Risk Hazekamp, Silvia B. and Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti, but each of the artists in She Me who unravel in their work the meanings behind the female body. And whoever the viewer may be, and with whatever thoughts and motives he or she views the bodies in the work of these artists, one thing becomes clear: the female image still serves as a social and political symbol, and thus threatens to exert a far-reaching influence on individual perception and identity. The visual arts offer scope for changing this phenomenon. Catrien Schreuder, Art Historian, 2011 (Essay published in the catalogue of She Me, Stedelijk Museum Zwolle) (1) Simone de Beauvoir, De Tweede Sekse, Utrecht 1990, p. 323 and p. 83. Original edition: Simone de Beauvoir, La Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex), 1949. (2) Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York/London 2008 (first printed in 1990), p. 22 (3) Barbara S. Krulik, Questioning Beauty: A Conversation with Silvia B., www.sculpture.org, July/August 2005 (4) Katharine Viner, 'I made the ring from a bullet and the pin of a hand grenade', www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/jan/26/israel (5) Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York/London 2008 (first printed in 1990), p. 45 back