Feminist Futures? Feminism and European Art, 1970-Present

The Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum invite art historians, curators, critics, and artists to propose papers for a two-day exchange of research, dialogue, and debate. Feminist Futures will take up the topic of gender and feminism in European art, from the 1970s to the present, with a special focus on the Nordic countries.

Despite the liberal reputation of the Nordic countries, the feminist revolution did not remap the art world in this context: women remain grossly underrepresented in museum collections, exhibitions, and historical studies, and feminism has tended to be taken for granted as an already completed historical project. If feminism remains an unfinished undertaking in a region known as a bastion of gender equity, then what of the rest of Europe? Today feminist art, curation, and theory are at a crossroads that demands new approaches and visions.

Reconsidering the generational framework of historical “waves,” which has been so decisive for feminist art historical scholarship, the conference seeks to explore how the circulations, translations, displacements, and renunciations of this model have shaped art and its discourses and institutions across Europe since 1970. Griselda Pollock has argued that the mission of feminism is to formulate new political subjectivities in the world and to articulate a project yet to come. How can we move on from the limits of the wave framework to develop new and productive insights into feminism’s ongoing relevance for contemporary art and art history?

We invite papers that reconsider and introduce historical subjects and present new research, methodological approaches, and issues. These can take the form of theoretical contributions, historical scholarship, or presentations of curatorial work and practice-based research in relation to the following topics:

- New languages of feminist expression and activism
- Transmissions and translations of art and ideas across borders
- The collection and circulation of feminist art
- Feminism and the politics of decolonialization and migration
- Ecological feminisms and the Anthropocene
- Transnational and global feminisms
- Feminism, race, and ethnicity
- Feminism and the changing notion of “the contemporary”
- Feminism, the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberalism
- Sexuality and gender identity
- The institutionalization of feminist art
- Feminism and the art market and financial speculation
- Feminism, labor conditions, and practices
- The legacies of feminism and future trajectories

The conference will be held 17-18 November 2021 at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (www.louisiana.dk), in conjunction with the exhibition Pia Arke (15 July 2021 – 2 February 2022) – a comprehensive critical reckoning with the visionary oeuvre of the Greenlandic-Danish artist. Louisiana has over the past years dedicated a range of large-scale exhibitions to women artists from the period covered by the conference, many of which have become represented in the museum’s permanent collection. The program will combine keynote lectures and panel discussions, academic papers, performative talks, and conversations. The research generated will be further disseminated in a peer-reviewed publication. All talks will be filmed and uploaded on the Louisiana Research website as a video publication.

Please send 200-word abstracts for 20-minute papers and a brief bio to Kerry Greaves (lkr893hum.ku.dk) by 1 July 2021. Speakers will be notified by 15 July 2021.

Organized by Nordic Feminist Art Histories Research Network as part of the research project Feminist Emergency: Women Artists in Denmark, 1900-1960, University of Copenhagen; Louisiana Research, and the European Postwar and Contemporary Art Forum.

Organizing Committee:
- Kerry Greaves, Assistant Professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen
- Marie Laurberg, Curator & Head of Research, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
- Anders Kold, Curator, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
- Jenevive Nykolak, Assistant Professor, California State University, Los Angeles