Sexism: Exploring, Exploding, Expanding Expressions of Masculinities and Femininities
Sexism, the stereotyping and discrimination based on gender, is confronted in Linda Stein’s series SEXISM. Stories of women being told to put their legs together, to take up less space, and their defiant response to such narrow inscriptions of femininity are the content for the video and tapestry, Legs Together and Apart. 925 (2018). The top image on this page, titled “Gloria Steinem 1037,” is a tapestry created by Linda Stein in 2020, which is 64″x72″x3″.
Tango is “an exchange of movement and touch, about a transnational negotiation of desire, of gender roles and communication” (Manning, 2006, p. x). As Horacio Ferrer writes, “before being an artistic expression, before tango came to light as such . . . tango was a certain attitude, a way of life adopted by those of diverse cultures” (1995, p. 11). Linda Stein asks: “In dancing tango does a women give and a man get?” Watch the 9-minute video of Stein discussing her tapestry in the sexism series titled “Loreen Arbus Says Tango is Egalitarian 974.”
Gaslighting is an abusive process of psychological manipulating a person into doubting self-worth, sensory knowing, and perceptions (Jackson, 2011). Once aware of gaslighting, you can extinguish its harmful psychological impact, although it is much more difficult to change the gaslighter. Artists, such as Linda Stein, in her sexism series, help us recognize gaslighting. Once recognized there are steps to extinguish. Begin by looking for gaslighting phrases in the tapestries of Stein’s sexism series.
What is the data? How is it presented in the tapestry? What is conveyed? When you look at the art section of the NYTimes, do you find artists promoted who share similar life experiences to you?
Data visualization art, documentation, methodology, and activism protect individuals from harassment while producing evidence of the massive scale of a problem such as is revealed in the hashtag movements of TimesUp, and MeToo, and the collection of signatures such as with the Not Surprised letter. Feminist theories and practices that have moved away from monolithic notions of women, engage difference by focusing on context-specific positionings of women in relation to other identities. Digital dust (Bernardi, 2018), webscraping, and reverse-engineer strategies can be used to gather data about issues important to you.
View the video Legs Together and Apart 925 Interview. Consider what gender expectations you have experienced. Draw or paint about your memory of gender expectations and how you navigated the expectations that seemed restrictive to your identity. Then look closely at Legs Together and Apart 925 and discuss the work in relation to how gender expectations are perpetuated and challenged.
Gender is indeed complicated. It also is beautiful and inherently fluid. The ability to express gender identity, free from oppressive double standards imposed by unfair “rules” or “principles” on certain people, is paramount to thriving in a democracy. Double standards, or unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations are seen, for example, in unfair expectations of behaviors deemed acceptable for men but not for women. Unequal treatment often results from biases, leading to unfair judgments, discrimination, and sexism. Justification for the double standard is missing, and when justification is provided, it is typically inappropriate. What does it mean to experience a “double standard,” especially a gendered one? This lesson deconstructs double standards students may have been a victim of or witnessed in their experience through open and honest conversation and artmaking in a safe space.
Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females — Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein (H2F2)
The sculpture for H2F2 includes Heroic Tapestries, Spoon to Shell Sculptures, and a Protector Sculpture as well as a 7-min film and book. The exhibition represents different aspects of bravery during the time of the Holocaust: Jew and non-Jew, child and adult, World War II military fighter and ghetto/concentration camp smuggler, record keeper and saboteur. Together they represent the many types of female heroism, with war battle gear and without, during the years of the Holocaust. For her Spoon to Shell sculpture, the artist blended spoon and shell into an amalgam of materials, addressing sexual abuse. Protector includes a Wonder Woman shadow and becomes a symbol for the brave defender.
A brave upstander joins with others, or stands alone, to protect others from violent circumstances in everyday experiences, such as bullying, or actively engages in promoting the well-being of others to balance inequalities or oppression. The upstander curricular encounters with H2F2 are catalysts for building empathy and learning how to be an upstander. --Learn more
Power encounters with H2F2 involve discussion about (dis)(em)power(ment). In Linda Stein's H2F2 tapestries and sculpture, she incorporates superheroes and fantasy icons that are juxtaposed with real-life female heroes. Stein's intent is to exemplify women’s heroic acts of rescue and protection during the time of the Holocaust. The power encounters also introduce other artists, Chitra Ganesh, and Ivan Velez Jr., who also use comics in their artwork.-- Learn more
Create a graphic novel/cartoon of the Hero Around/Within Us that incorporates self-narratives of real and/or imagined experiences. From reading the essays in the 2016 H2F2 book or from your own research on each of the heroes (see links on the Leadership encounter to begin research), and looking at the Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females tapestries, one can learn about the lives and actions of the women, and the context of their lives. Add to, as well as, respond to the interactive prompts overlaid on the digitized tapestries, to explore Stein’s use of feminist pop culture and religious icons such as Wonder Woman, Kannon, and Mononoke—who personify the values of empowerment, strength, justice and protection. -- Learn more
An encounter with the Anne Frank tapestry called, Welcome Home, begins with reading excerpts from her diary and current news reports concerning groups of people seeking safety in a foreign land. The current news could be juxtaposed with film images from Voyage of the Damned. The historical documentary depicts the incident in 1939 when a ship traveling from Germany to Cuba, full of Jewish refugees seeking asylum and safety, is refused entry to Cuba; and then when they try to land in the United States, in Florida, they’re again refused entry. Forced to return back to Germany, some people jumped overboard. While eventually some refugees were granted asylum in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, many were not, and subsequently exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. How could the past inform the present, so that people could be welcomed home? Create a collage, which includes news images from the past and present, along with diary entries, that brings a personal perspective to current and historical events about the desire to be welcomed home. Seeking and learning about a diverse range of life narratives prompts an empathetic process of understanding injustice within the complexities of environments and communities.
The ARTifact encounter, with the Spoon to Shell Series in the H2F2 exhibition, begins with a discussion, while looking at the art, with others whose social class, age, gender, sexuality, and ethnic background differs from one’s own. To join the discussion click here. To interpret a cultural artifact, it is important to look at conditions for its production as they relate to socioeconomic class structures, gender-role expectations, and specific visual codes of the time, as well as how those codes have changed over time. Using Regender (Yee, 2005), read articles that are regendered–about the cultural artifacts–to discern whether and how the meaning has changed. Look again at each work in the Spoon to Shell Series. What does the spoon signify in relation to the shells and text fragments and other items in the box assemblages? The uniformity of the 20 black, wooden, box sculptures brings order and calm to the chaos, fragments, and tensions that are visible from the window of each box. Stein uses spoons and shells in the box sculptures as metaphors for power and vulnerability. --Learn more
The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein (FoG)
The FoG exhibition explores the continuum between the binaries of masculinity and femininity, while inspiring the compassion, empathy and bravery it takes to become an upstander rather than a bystander. Have Art Will Travel! (HAWT) asks people to re-invent and visualize bravery for themselves, to look at the armor they wear, the safety they seek. The artist says, “with my androgynous forms, I invite the viewer to seek out diversity in unpredictable ways, to ‘try on’ new personal avatars and self-definitions, knowing that every new experience changes the brain’s structure, and inspires each of us to a more authentic self.”
In the Body encounters with The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein (FoG), the sculptures are the launch pads to explore vulnerability and protection. One approach is to collaboratively create Body Sculpture Narratives that incorporate sound and light interactivity as well as accompanying voice narratives. This encounter facilitates art creation to explore one’s own experiences of vulnerability and protection. Read more ...
The Identity encounter with The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein begins with a discussion in a circle and asks the participants to write three words that define themselves or how they would like to be known. Follow this prompt with distributing Black Lives Matter ribbons or post-its that they might wear, and ask what matters to them that others should consider for the good of all. What should matter to the society at large? The facilitator then invites participants in the circle to introduce themselves by stating their name, which can be a name that they wish to use for this session based on their values.
Next, the facilitator asks each participant to use a gender identity concept or experience to write a Find Card. Three resources for terminology are linked here: 1 & 2 & 3 global. A Find Card begins with a directive or prompt to find something in an exhibition. The find prompt is followed by a question. Participants visiting the exhibition create the Find Cards rather than the educator. Read more ...
Displacement from Home: What to Leave, What to Take — Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases and Closets
Responding to the issue of migration, which has defined the 20th and 21st centuries with prolonged global flight on a massive scale, Displacement is a natural progression of Stein’s artistic projects since 9/11, in which she focused on themes of protection and victimization, power and vulnerability. Stein responds visually and viscerally with work that echoes heartbreak and hope. Anxiety and affirmation can exist simultaneously or separately: these sculptures contain metaphoric fragments left in the flight from a threatened household, and/or remnants which have been carefully, methodically, and patiently re-contextualized into new surroundings: the safe home. These varied items, significant and quotidian, adored and abandoned, are recalled as moments from daily life: neighborhood, culture – identity. Within each sculpture, there is a paradoxical combination of menace and serenity. One shelf or drawer holds haunting reminders of life, materials worn and rusted or brand new, lying around in unexpected couplings after one might have been forced to rush out the door.
Art teachers can guide students to investigate stories that are conveyed through visual culture, especially stories that are repeated over and over again in a culture. There is never a single story about any place or people. In this encounter, select one of the Cabinets, Cupboards, Cases, and Closets sculptures to imagine a life story situated in a community of people. With collage, drawing, and painting, create a series of artworks of people in action that includes an element of the selected art in their action. Display the series together and discuss the work with others. Return to looking at the selected sculpture and reinterpret the piece from the perspectives gained from the process of this encounter.
The sculptures in Displacement from Home contain metaphoric fragments left in the flight from a threatened household, and/or remnants which have been carefully, methodically, and patiently re-contextualized into new surroundings: the safe home. These sculptures explore the state of being displaced with the sensibility of interconnectivity, accessibility, resistance.
A Collaborative, Interactive Sound/Light Sculptural Story Wall: BODY SCULPTURE NARRATIVES through Linda Stein’s The Fluidity of Gender
Adaptable for MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL
Overview
In this encounter, students, using The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein (FoG) as a departure point to explore identity and protection through the creation of a body sculpture and incorporate sound and light interactivity as well as an accompanying voice narrative.This encounter provides a way to visually represent an answer to the question, “What story do I want to share about protection?
Central Focus
This encounter captures the universal experience of all people who have used their own “armor” to hide something or to protect themselves. Sometimes the protection may only a façade used to survive and get ahead; sometimes it may be a cover used to hide pain and resentment at being treated unfairly.
Through making their own body sculpture and telling their own story, students will have the opportunity to define aspects of their identities to highlight as well as aspects of their identity to conceal. Sharing their body sculpture provides a way for students to express themselves in their own way as well as a way to counter the labels or stereotypes others may have placed on them.
STE(ARTS)M learning is incorporated into empowering, social justice themes. STEM learning tends to foster left-brain convergent thinking – one best answer. The Arts disciplines tend to foster right-brain divergent thinking – many ‘right’ answers. In this lesson we combine these ways of thinking.
Learning Goals
Students will learn about artist Linda Stein’s art and her exhibition The Fluidity of Gender
Students will apply the idea of protection to the self and interpret aspects of their complex identities– what they want to present to others and what aspects they want to conceal. 2A. Each Student or in Pairs with create a Visual Collaged Reference Board for Brainstorming-including cut outs of favorite super heroes, favorite song lyrics they listened to during moments when then needed to feel protected or song lyrics that helped motivate them to protect/stand up for themselves, brave role models, pics of people that are important in their life- to help validate their emotions.
Students will create visual symbols that represent aspects of their self with or without text.
Students will create a body sculpture by casting a part of their own body.
Students will create and record their own sounds, a series of short 10 sec sounds/noise/body movement choosing either a) what it sounds like when you have to protect yourself (like an alarm/ fast heartbeat/intensifying breathing) or b) what it sounds like when you are unable to protect yourself or someone you care about- These sounds can be layered into a final narrative in which students tell their own story by recording it, editing it, and transferring it to be used as an interactive part of their artwork as a touch point to animate sound.
Students will learn about interactivity and the role of sound and light in enhancing experiences with art through discussion and visual examples.
Students will learn basic circuitry and conductivity using LED lights and tiny lily microprocessors as well as touchboard for incorporating sound to their artwork.
Mode of Assessment and Communicating Feedback
Students will keep a Journal that will allow facilitators and students to read and write comments to journals/ start additional written conversations to help validate the students authentic and honest aspects of any personal narratives they are willing to share/ bring to this project– each worksheet / art work viewed/ discussed will be glued into the journals
Materials for body sculpture making, including (but not limited to):
Journal
packing tape (lots),
vinyl adhesive (assorted colors) printer shops usually have scraps to give,
student-generated text, images, and symbols,
scissors and/or exacto knives
bare conductive touchboard: https://www.bareconductive.com/shop/touch-board/
twisty wire
coin cell batteries and holders
LED lights
switches
tiny lilies for light function available at https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10899
Speakers
USB Plug (for connecting touchboard to an electrical outlet)
Protector 841 with Wonder Woman shadow. Artist: Linda Stein. Leather, metal, mixed-media; 78 x 56
Find Cards is a differential learning and assessment strategy that Keifer-Boyd (2014, 2013) developed in the 1970s for teaching mixed age groups from five-year-olds to elders in art galleries. When participants create Find Cards, facilitators discern what learners find important. Also, in composing a question, reflection on what is learned integrates assessment with learning.
FIND CARD ACTIVITY:Partner with another (someone you don’t know in the group). Spend 10-15 minutes together looking at the exhibition and writing a “Find Card.” When finished, place your card with the other cards. Select another card together and find a work that the card prompt directs attention. With your partner, discuss the question posed on the Find Card and other interpretations or knowledge you have about the work. A Find Card begins with a directive or clue of something to find in an exhibition and includes a question. For example:
FIND CARD EXAMPLES:
Find an artwork that is about a civic action. What are the challenges of the civic action conveyed in the work?
Find an artwork about power and vulnerability. How does the work convey these ideas and with what impact?
Find a situation of diversity, difference, exclusion or inclusivity in one of the artworks. Can you relate to the situation? Have you ever felt pressure to exclude someone? What happened?
Find an artwork that makes you feel angry. Why do you think it made you feel this way?
Find an artwork that makes you feel empowered. Why does it make you feel this way? Do you think others would feel empowered by this too?
RESOURCES:
Keifer-Boyd, K., & Kraft, M. L. (2014). IDEA<—>Empowerment through difference <—>Find Card strategies. In S. Malley (Ed.), 2013 VSA Intersections: Arts and Special Education Exemplary Programs and Approaches (pp. 147-158). Washington, DC: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Kraft, M., & Keifer-Boyd, K. (2013). Including Difference: A communitarian approach to art education in the Least Restrictive Environment. Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association.
Stein, L. (Ed.), 2016. Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females—Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein. Philadelphia, PA: Old City Publishing.
Voice recording of “Civic Engagement” Find Card Activity on July 12, 2016:
Protector 841 with Wonder Woman shadow. Artist: Linda Stein. Leather, metal, mixed-media; 78 x 56
Running Away/Against Biopolitical Tattooing
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York City left an indelible mark on the art of Linda Stein. Desperate to get away from the raging flames, black smoke, suffocating dust, and cancerous debris, New Yorkers frantically ran for cover during the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers. Over 3000 people lost their lives that day. Stein recalls her experience of running during 9/11. It was during this time that the notion of and the “need for protection” came to the foreground and began to imbue her most recent body of work (Peck, 2016).
ACTIVITY OVERVIEW: Visit the 9/11 Memorial. 2. Create a visual essay. A visual essay can be composed of one or more images. 3. Share image with colleagues and use your visual essay(s) in subsequent Stein Institute workshops throughout the week.
PROCESS:Artistic responses to 9/11 are diverse. The images range from introspective reflections to abstract images to horrific visual representations of the 9/11 events. For this encounter, we will be visit the 9/11 Memorial. Using your camera, smart phone, or sketch pad, capture images, sounds, and sensations of the museum outdoor space, the people, the memorial, the gift shop, and/or the surrounding city space. Will your work be an introspective reflection (image and text or text only), a critique, an abstract photo or image, a “realistic” rendering, or collage?
What are some of the topics or visual representations associated with the 9/11 events that interest you and why? The questions below are meant to guide your reflection. Feel free to create your own critical question(s), reflections, and images based on your impressions of our field trip to the 9/11 Memorial and conversations surrounding Stein’s Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females.
CENSORSHIP:Where in the 9/11 Museum (if at all) are the images and narratives of the people running of or jumping off the towers (see Richard Drew)? Why did the Pentagon censor images of US soldiers’ coffins returning from Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, following 9/11?
ETHICS:What are the ethics involved in maintaining a museum shop that sells memorabilia (or trinkets) of the most devastating terrorist act in the history of the U.S.? Whether positive or negative, reflect on the issue, make your case, and support with images and discussion. WHY do we need a 9/11 memorial? Who benefits? Why is a 9/11importnat to families that lost loved ones, New Yorkers, and the world?
SELFIE:Take a Selfie at the 9/11 Museum outdoor space, the museum/memorial, the gift shop, and/or the surrounding city space. What do you want to communicate with this image?
CURRICULUM & PEDAGOGY:The purpose of the curricular encounters with the art exhibition Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females—Tapestries and Sculpture by Linda Stein (H2F2) is to (re)imagine what global citizenship can be, and to highlight the role of art and education toward social justice. Take photos or images that (re)imagine global citizenship as social justice.
RESOURCES:
Agamben, G. (2008, June). No to biopolitical tattooing (Trans. S. J. Murray).
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(2), 201-202; Danto, A. (2005). 9/11 Art as a gloss on
Wittgenstein. ArtNet. Peck, S. (2016). Affect: Interview with Linda Stein [Unpublished]. New York, NY.
Each type of power utilizes different types of images and different strategies to impact human behavior and societal practices. Our deep-seated understanding of power affects how we relate to images, objects, and people.
The Identity Exploration with Cultural Artifacts encounter, with the Spoon to Shell Series, begins with a discussion, while looking at the art, with others whose social class, age, gender, sexuality, and ethnic background differs from one’s own. To join the discussion click here. Look again at each work in the Spoon to Shell Series. What does the spoon signify in relation to the shells and text fragments and other items in the box assemblages? Stein uses spoons and shells in the box sculptures as metaphors for power and vulnerability.
PURPOSE & LEARNING GOALS
(1) To investigate visual culture as a means of communicating and perpetuating cultural values, including the ways in which visual culture affects perception of self and the world. (2) To explore issues of power and privilege and its various forms in visual culture. (3) To analyze media, advertisements, photographs, alternative media, objects, spaces, places, signs and codes as sources of power. (4) To “decode” and “encode” the symbols that dominate society.
PROCESS: Start with the familiar, and identify a significant cultural artifact. Take a photograph of the object, or select an image from a magazine or an online source. Consider: “What are some contemporary meanings encoded in the cultural artifact that you selected?”
PALIMPSEST TRACES: To explode commonly held beliefs from a broad range of viewpoints, research and discussion are important. The following questions facilitate dialogue about different cultural meaning systems and the sources of the meanings that we assume others perceive, and they also help to expose oppressive meanings or damaging stereotypes. Consider these questions:
Where do the meanings you associate with these images come from?
Are they from knowledge you have gained from your own observations of life, are they from associations, or are they from society’s ideas of the “true nature” of the objects?
COLLABORATION: Next, show your image of a selected cultural artifact and invite three others—whose social class, age, gender, sexual orientation, and/or ethnic background differ from your background—to provide a response to the question: What meanings do you associate with this image of an object, and from what experiences have you learned that meaning? Record the responses from a minimum of three other people, and then research to discover other cultural meanings ascribed to the object.
ALTERNATIVE MEANINGS: To interpret a cultural artifact, it is important to look at conditions for its production as they relate to socioeconomic class structures, gender-role expectations, and specific visual codes of the time, as well as how those codes have changed over time. Research by doing a Google image search to see how the object/artifact is used in a variety of visual media, and Google websites to discover references to the artifact. Take one website that refers to the object frequently and put the URL to that website in the http://regender.com/index.html and read the revised regendered story to discern if and how the meaning has changed. Consider feminist or critical race interpretations of your selected cultural artifact.
(re)CONTEXTUALIZE: Visually present the various meanings of the artifact paying particular attention to issues of social class, gender, race, and sexual identity in relation to the privileging or devaluing of the artifact you have selected.
Ten Heroes 859. Tapestry by Linda Stein. Leather, archival pigment on canvas, fabric, metal, zippers; 56 x 61 x 2 inches; 2016.
OVERVIEW
Power Encounter involves discussion about (dis)(em)power(ment). In this encounter, students will look at artists who are connecting to themes of power and narrative and make art that re-imagines new narratives of everyday heroism.
PURPOSE
Artist Linda Stein creates tapestries and sculptures that incorporate superheroes and fantasy icons that are juxtaposed with real-life female heroes. In her series entitled Holocaust Heroes Fierce Females, Stein’s intent is to exemplify women’s heroic acts of rescue and protection during the time of the Holocaust. In her series entitled Fluidity of Gender Stein creates wearable, androgynous sculptures that enable viewers to try on new personas or avatars. In this encounter students will be introduced to other artists, who are Stein’s contemporaries, Chitra Ganesh, and Ivan Velez Jr. who also use comics in their artwork.
Given that images transmit a range of social and cultural values that privilege and exclude others, this encounter aims to create the capacity for imagining and envisioning new narratives and new realities that challenge dominant narratives. This encounter also aims to develop personal strategies for understanding cultural dynamics that include the diversities, ambiguities and complexities of power and identity construction that can be applied to communicating and teaching students about such topics in a developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive manner.
LEARNING GOALS
Through observation and discussion, students identify, analyze, investigate, and reflect upon issues related to power and heroism in the context of everyday experience.
Drawing upon everyday experience, students create, tell, or reveal personal narratives that tell a story of heroism.
Through engagement with artists who use comic imagery, students envision their empowered self as an upstander on an everyday basis, in this particular case by finishing the statements: “I am an Upstander for ___________. Or “I am an Upstander when ___________.
The Identity Exploration with Cultural Artifacts encounter, with the 