Backflip: humour and feminism in art

Jokes and humour are serious business. According to Freud they can provide a stairway to the subconscious where all sorts of forbidden taboos posture nakedly, and can slip out in conversation wearing the socially acceptable clothes of ‘just kidding’. 

But aside from providing this insight into the recesses of the mind, humour can also be a sharpened tool, used for political lampooning and cultural commentary.

In the exhibition, ‘Backflip: Feminism and Humour in Contemporary Art’, curator Laura Castagnini shows how a collection of artworks, whose mission is wit and comic playfulness, can function as an arsenal to provoke and criticise.

“Feminist humour is often disruptive in the way it seeks to destabilise the patriarchy and structures of sexism and oppression,” Ms Castagnini says.

“This disruption of the status quo often creates space for a viewer to rethink their position on the role of women and other feminist issues. Humour also entices people, and can be an effective strategy for engagement.”

Ms Castagnini is currently completing a Masters in Art History, researching the relationship between feminism and humour. Curating this exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery at the Victorian College of the Arts has allowed her to use gallery space to allow her insights to materialise before an audience. 

“Humour is a technique used by feminist artists in a range of ways. Some artworks use humour to mock their oppressors and others utilise the grotesque to disrupt ideas about femininity and social expectations.”

“Other artworks critique institutions of power and male privilege or parody the way women are represented in society,” said Ms Castagnini. “I’ve tried to represent a wide variety of strategies in the exhibition.”

‘Flowing Locks’, by Hannah Raisin is one of the audiovisual artworks on display. It is a performance piece with a young woman in a flesh-toned body suit, with holes cut at the armpits and crotch. The artist has fixed delicate strands of hair about 2 meters long to these holes in the suit. The artist dances and twirls elegantly, with hair streaming from her body.

“This is a throwback to the 1970s hairy armpits,” says Ms Castagnini. “This exhibition reflects feminist issues that are still relevant and Raisin’s work demonstrates that body hair is still an issue that comes up for women today.”

This artwork, like so many in the exhibition, serves as a reminder that humour and light-hearted criticism is a valuable tool in the deconstruction of cultural practices. In this case, the social assumptions made about female body hair, beauty and femininity.

Ms Castagnini has been mentored by Vikki McInnes, the director of the Margaret Lawrence Gallery at the VCA. 

Reflecting on the process of putting together the exhibition and the bitter contrast between the wit and comedy implicit in the show, and the stark oppressive world which feminism rails against, Ms McInnes says in the time she and ms Castagnini have been working together on the exhibition there have been some “decidedly unfunny moments in the cause for women both at home and abroad, with the gang rape and subsequent death of a young student in Delhi.” 

Art is both the medium to communicate and absorb the variety of challenges that is in the sights of feminists, but the world of art presents problems and complications for female artists and curators.  

“We are both keenly aware that the high proportion of female-to-male artists in the student cohort is quickly inverted when one looks to career opportunities and commercial representation beyond art school,” Ms McInnes says.

The punchline of this exhibition is one of subversive provocation, prompting the reader to re-evaluate the world around them. But with a little cheekiness. 

Backflip was on show at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery through May.  To find out what is currently showing go to: 

www.vca.unimelb.edu.au/gallery