What if women ruled the world? / At the National Museum of Contemporary Art, an exhibition with only female artists

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (NMCA) has just opened the fourth and final part of the exhibition cycle of the series «What if women ruled the world?» with seven new exhibitions, by the Iranian painter Tala Madani, the first in a European museum after more than ten years, a new installation by Eva Stefanis, the first presentation in Greece of the important British sculptor Phyllida Barlow in collaboration with NEON and Collection D Daskalopoulou, the individual presentations of works by Bouchra Khalili and Susan Meiselas and for the first time a series of unknown designs by Eleni Pitari-Pangalou.

This entire thematic circle owes its birth to the initiative of EMST artistic director Katerina Gregou. Even the title itself testifies to the philosophical, existential and political questions that make such an exhibition great. What if women and femininity ruled the world? Would the violence have subsided under the pressure of Justice? Would wars be a distant past with no place in the present? Would the environment make dull cities more beautiful?

This thematic circle with its artistic content but also with the choice to be overwhelmed only by women and femininity undoubtedly confirms the basic role that Art must perform, to give birth and pose questions free from the anxiety of answers, since only the formulation of these questions is enough for a necessary existential and political effervescence that today seems more than necessary and useful.

Opening the fourth part of the exhibition cycle, EMST will have presented a total of 18 solo exhibitions, installations and works, highlighting the work of 40 artists of different ages and backgrounds, capturing with the plurality of their voices interdisciplinary feminism and the diversity of women’s experiences and identities depending on race and class.

The important thing about this fourth part is that the EMST has been left to be completely occupied by only female artists, something that happens for the first time in a public museum in the world.

From December 2023 until November 2024, EMST will have managed to install in our eyes and in the minds of visitors a whole and complete cycle of exhibitions that has focused stubbornly on the artistic work of women and artists who identify themselves as femininity, under it the inventive umbrella title «What if women ruled the world?» (What if Women Ruled the World?), which owes its existence to Yael Bartana’s eponymous neon work (2017) that is presented on the north and south facades of the EMST building and is visible on the rise and fall of Syngrou Avenue for so as not to allow passing eyes to avoid contact with him.

In an era with conservative reflexes springing up from everywhere, politically charged and polarized, in a Europe that is often led in the dark, with a world full of femicides and numbers that shock even in our country, EMST with this set of our exhibitions forces us to imagine the world differently, to surrender it to women and femininity and in turn to surrender to their world and admit how much more beautiful their world looks through their eyes, through their hands, through their creations. This exhibition cycle is like a scream, a cry, a “enough is enough” in a world of men that marginalized and many times disappeared women from Art, made them invisible, many times attributed their works to male creators who took them away because they could and especially in a Greece that is characterized by a minimal presence of women and femininity in the visual arts to this day. This exhibition cycle sheds light on their exclusions, gives space to their gazes and their artistic concerns while turning their works into clean breaths in the stench and suffocation of the patriarchy of our daily lives.