Iwona Blazwick on Anna Maria Maiolino

The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

Arts

4.8 • 877 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Episode 10 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the legendary Director of Whitechapel Gallery IWONA BLAZWICK on the radical Brazilian artist ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO!! And WOW is it incredible to hear one of the most important curators in the WORLD today speaking so passionately about one of the greatest Latin American artists – who also has an unmissable exhibition on right now at Whitechapel Gallery. With a career spanning five decades and counting, 77 year-old Maiolino works across a multitude of mediums including performance, photography, and sculpture. Born in Italy during WW2, Maiolino emigrated to Venezuela and then Brazil, where she lived in extreme politically unstable times under a dictatorship. But this fuelled Maiolino to make art that reflected these times: hidden away from the authorities, and challenging what it really meant to be a woman in this environment. Known for her blindfolded performances where she avoided treading on hundreds of eggshells to highlight the fragility of life under a dictatorship, sculptures of the body that featured just the basic system to emulate the mere 'existence' of life under a dictatorship, Maiolino also focusses on simple shapes and forms to emphasise the universality of art and clay, substituting it for a language that, as an immigrant, never felt was hers. I cannot STRESS how fascinating my chat with the brilliant Iwona Blazwick was. It made me realise so much about what artists do to survive when under political scrutiny, but also how much Mailino's work applies not just to artists, but to the public today. We also discuss Iwona's role as a museum director and what that means in 2019; programming women artists exhibitions now compared to the 80s and 90s; 'exclusion' (such as women and Latin American artists) in the traditional art historical canon; the importance of diversity in institutions; and making shows relevant and accessible for everyone today. Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary is at the Whitechapel Gallery until 12 January: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/anna-maria-maiolino/ Further reading: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-world-goes-pop/artist-biography/anna-maria-maiolino https://frieze.com/article/i-allowed-myself-be-eaten-anna-maria-maiolino-cultural-cannibalism-brazil Thank you for listening!! This episode is sponsored by the National Art Pass/ @artfund: https://bit.ly/32HJVDk To receive a free tote bag with your National Art Pass, enter the code GREAT at checkout! Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by @_ellieclifford Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	As you can probably tell, visiting galleries and museums is one of my absolute favourite activities,
0:06.0	and our new sponsor, The National Art Pass, makes that a whole lot easier, smoother and cheaper for us art lovers and gallery goers.
0:14.0	Not only does the National Art Pass grant you free entry to over 240 museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK such as Kensington Palace,
0:23.4	Cardiff Castle and the Hornemann Museum. It also gives 50% off major exhibitions at places such as
0:29.7	the British Museum, Tate, VNA, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and so many more.
0:35.8	And we all know that they have some pretty good upcoming and
0:38.6	current exhibitions, from Dora Marr at the Tate Modern to Elizabeth Payton at the National Portrait
0:43.3	Gallery. Membership is just £70 for an entire year and for those under 30, it's a mere £45.
0:50.1	And for lucky great women artists listeners, you can also receive an exclusive tote bag designed
0:54.8	by Malika Fave when you buy a National Art Pass by entering the code, great, at checkout.
1:00.4	Thanks to our sponsor, the National Art Pass for making this podcast possible.
1:09.0	Hello everyone and welcome to the Great Woman Artists podcast with me, Katie Hessel.
1:14.7	Some of you might know me from The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account I set up in October
1:19.1	2015, which celebrates female artists on a daily basis, ranging from young graduates to old
1:25.2	masters. Well, in a similar fashion to the Instagram,
1:29.2	this podcast is all about celebrating female artists from a variety of backgrounds and histories.
1:34.9	And I am so excited to be interviewing artists on their career or artists, writers, curators,
1:40.4	or general art lovers on the women artist who means most of them. What I want this podcast to do is
1:46.7	celebrate female artists in all different capacities so you, the listener, can gain a look into the
1:52.1	greatest female artists working now or from art history. I'm very excited to say that my guest today is the brilliant Ivona Blaswick, one of the most
2:07.9	important and groundbreaking curators in the world right now and the director of the Whitechapel Gallery
2:13.1	in London, a position she has held since 2001. Under Blaswick's directorship, the gallery has been a
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