The contest seeks that creative women artists can participate with their proposals and generate spaces that minimize gender gaps and that also become a showcase for exhibition, development and economic autonomy.
During the morning of Thursday, October 27, the Voices for Equity forum, organized by the Andean Development Corporation (CAF) served as a framework to generate the meeting of a group of women who raised the challenges of gender equality in the next years. The event, held at the CAF headquarters in Altamira, Caracas, presented the testimonies and experiences of six outstanding women in the field of the arts and the fight for equality.
Mercedes Munozfounder of the NGO Venezuelan Association for Alternative Sex Education (Avesa); popular plastic artist palmyra strapwho represented Venezuela at the 59th Venice Art Biennale in 2022; Malu Valerio, visual artist, creator and researcher; the artist Dawa Yekwana, leader of the Association of Yekuana Women Weavers and founder of Adoonis of Yekuana Women Entrepreneurs; the filmmaker claudia lepage and the curator and researcher Carmen Hernandezshared with an audience full of women what has been the road traveled to generate the social changes that the country needs to achieve gender equality and how much still remains to be done for the new generations.
The forum was opened by CAF’s Executive President, Sergio Díaz-Granados, and the organization’s Secretary General, Alejandra Claros. The event was moderated by Ana María Baiardi, manager of gender, inclusion and diversity at CAF and former Minister of Women in Paraguay.
“We have to make sure that women have an income and can have independence without being subjected to violence, whether from society or family, and that this strengthens them as people and above all in their feminine identity,” said Baiardi, adding is this is just a step to make visible the achievements of women in the arts and other areas of development, to contribute to the reduction of gender gaps between women and men.
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At the end of the forum, CAF Secretary General Alejandra Claros officially launched the contemporary art contest called Creators. She highlighted that this contest has a monetary prize with the aim of helping emerging, popular, young artists or those who have developed in non-traditional areas of art to have the economic capacity to build this as a cultural industry in Latin America.
Venezuela will be the pilot space for this initiative. The contest is aimed at women artists with no age limit, over 18 years of age, open to all disciplines and plastic expressions and to utilitarian art, design and crafts.
«CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, Volante Studio and GBGArts invite the female artistic community of Venezuela to participate in this contest that will expand the range of visibility of female creation within the Venezuelan visual arts, offering an amplified panorama of its own production from another perspective and will boost the loud participation of its protagonists in our country”, explained Claros.
The theme is free and each artist must present an unpublished work with which they can take part. The call is open from October 27, 2022 to March 5, 2023. The selection of the participants will be done online and a pre-selection jury will announce the result on March 8, 2023, International Women’s Day.
The artists will participate in a face-to-face exhibition at the end of May 2023, when the verdict of the award jury will be made public in both categories and which includes a cash prize: first and second prize in the Art category (all media) and in Art Utility will receive $5,000 for first place and $3,000 for second place. The four winning works will become part of the CAF Collection.
“Throughout history, women have not been an equal part of the public sphere of art. Although they have held different and diverse positions, equal conditions have not prevailed in this journey and, as in many areas of political, economic and social life in the world, women and gender diversity in the cultural field have also been underrepresented, marginalized and even undervalued in the art market. In reviews and public statistics, percentages can be found that indicate that, in the Western Hemisphere, although more than half of the performers of creation are women, they are nevertheless less exhibited and earn much less money than men for their artistic proposals» , stood out through a promotional video in which the forum members and the event organizers participated.
The details of the call to participate in the Creators contest can be detailed through social networks @ProyecCreadoras on Twitter and Instagram @ProjectCreators or you can write via email: [email protected]
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