FED-tWIN "GENDER" Through the lens of gender: stories and history within the museum archival and art collections
2022 > 2032
Promotor(s) : Inga Rossi-Schrimpf (MRBAB), Alexander Streitberger (Uclouvain, CERTA)
Researcher(s) : Audrey Lasserre (MRBAB / Uclouvain, CERTA)
The ‘Gender’ research project is designed to address one of the main concerns of our society, in which museum spaces play an integral role: reflection on gender issues and representations (social sexes and sexualities).
By linking the question of narratives to that of history, at the heart of the museum and from a gender perspective, the research seeks to shed new light on the role that museums can play within a society and a policy that prioritize gender equality and inclusion. In this sense, the project works on archives and collections, but always with the public.
The scientific objectives can be summarized in three main areas:
1) Assessing the role of women artists and how they are represented: This involves evaluating the (re/dis)qualification of their works, leading to a broader reflection on the "value of art," and consequently on what is considered "art" and what constitutes a "museum piece."
2) Incorporating the category of gender: This includes analyzing the power dynamics inherent in representations to demonstrate that gender is a social and historical construct, and that artistic production is not a mere reflection of it. This also involves exploring the relationship between artworks and gender, as well as between aesthetics and gender issues.
3) Focus on non-heterocentric narratives, i.e. narratives and representations of sexualities other than normative heterosexual sexuality. In this sense, ‘queer’, which refers to a non-binary approach to gender and sexuality, serves as another “tool” for rediscovering collections and archives.
The ‘Gender’ project, which combines art history, conceptual and methodological tools related to gender, and narrative analysis, fully align with the study of modality, —a term referring to the ways in which things are presented, as well as the forms and attitudes they embody. It relies on textual analysis of narratives and their poetics, including the sources, storytelling methods, and the question of focalization or point of view, all viewed through the lens of gender.
Contact: audrey.lasserre@fine-arts-museum.be / audrey.lasserre@uclouvain.be
