Is it possible to assert that artistic objects have a gender, in virtue of their material attributes (and not only their authorship)? Textile arts and embroidery, in particular, seem to pertain to a category of objects that are “naturally associated to feminine work”. We intend to argue how such works were historically feminized in the
western artistic milieu, as a result of a process of imposition undertaken by the academic system. Since the 16th century, the academies began to congregate the artist’s formal training and also his consecration. One should notice that such a system established a hierarchy of genres, a classification system that ranked art-forms,
Bordado e transgressão: questões de gênero na arte de Rosana Paulino e Rosana Palazyan, Ana Paula Simioni
Revista Proa, n°02, vol.01, 2010.
http://www.ifch.unicamp.br/proa2
considering history painting as the “highest” form of art, tenured almost exclusively by
male artists, and condemning as “inferior” the applied arts, regarded as domestic, and
in this way, feminine. The uprise of feminism, in the seventies, led the way to artists
like the North American Miriam Schapiro to carry on a reappraisal of “feminine”
traditions, simultaneously articulating it to a political discourse against gender
discrimination practices operating within the very field of art history. In Brazil, since
the 1980s, interesting projects renovated the textile arts. Within this context, the
works of Rosana Paulino and Rosana Palazian are particularly noteworthy due to their
ability to subvert perceptions and meanings traditionally associated to these “feminine”
crafts; their embroideries engage new ways of looking and thinking, that are extremely
critical of the hierarchy of genres and of gender (artistic and social), which rule not
only daily practices, but also the art world