The eye of the beholder: EOTH and The Goddess Exhibit
As art historian and feminist critic Linda Nochlin summed it up, “the white Western male viewpoint [is] unconsciously accepted as the viewpoint of the art historian.”
Alexandra Ray and Catherine Loewe, co-founders of Eye of the Huntress (EOTH), are looking to challenge that viewpoint with their online gallery. Their newest exhibit, “Goddess,” is a refutation of centuries’ worth of female exclusion, featuring the work of nine sought-after female artists displayed digitally.
“Goddess” will also be their first exhibit of NFTs, and curators and contributors alike feel confident that this dive into web3 is a vital step for elevating the status of female artists.
“There’s been a lot of talk about emphasizing the strength of women,” said Ray. “The resilience, the beauty we add, the value we add, that was a theme we wanted to work with.”
What began as a female-founded virtual gallery has rapidly begun to expand into something cutting edge and intensely focused on the issues raised by Nochlin. Her famous essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” was published just over 50 years ago, listing a series of problems she perceived with how women have been excluded from art. Nochlin identifies women’s historical lack of access to art education, the responsibility of child-rearing that falls more heavily on mothers than on fathers, and societal expectations that placed greater value on men’s creative pursuits, resulting in male artists, and (lesser) female “hobbyists.”
Loewe and Ray had these problems in mind as they established EOTH, and, in many ways, “Goddess” is an attempt to address these issues in the art community, to push back against what Nochlin archly labels as “the woman problem” by creating women-powered solutions.
Reposted from: superrare.com
