The exhibition “Queer* Fem* magaZINES” highlights the importance of magazines, zines and comics for the dissemination and visibility of feminist and queer art as well as the ways in which artistic publishing can be thought queer-feminist.

Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) was a professor of modern art at New York University’s Department of Fine Arts. She studied and wrote extensively on issues including the role of gender in art history. Her 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Important Women Artists?” was a reckoning with the fact that art has been thought of in male terms since time immemorial. “The question of equality for women. It’s not a question when the same arguments keep coming up. We are not looking for answers. We want change.” says Linda Nochlin.

In her essay, she made it clear that the imbalance between male and female artists was not due to individual talent and “genius”, but to the longstanding structural exclusion of female artists from art academies, salons, museums, etc.

“We want change!”

These thoughts were published in small booklets and magazines, partly similar to a school newspaper from the 1970s made with paper, scissors and glue as a copy template. These publications are the subject of the exhibition at the Rupertinum and document an interesting piece of contemporary history and a discourse that continues to this day, which these publications helped to initiate.

The “Heresies Collective“, for example, was founded in 1976 by a politically motivated group of artists and activists in New York. Between 1977 and 1993, the collective published a total of 27 issues of the feminist magazine “HERESIES – A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics”. The theme of one issue was “Lesbian Art and Artists”.

Lesbian Art and Artists

The exhibition at the Rupertinum shows several other examples on this topic. For example, publications by LTTR (Lesbians To The Rescue) from 2002 to 2006. LTTR served as a mouthpiece for feminist and queer communities and stands for a culture of critical thinking. Here, too, gender and gender differences are thematised.

Martina Kessel, Professor of Modern History and Gender History at Bielefeld University, wrote about this in 1995 “From an art historical and media theoretical perspective, intensive research has been conducted in recent decades on how gender and gender differences are produced and stabilised in and through images and other media of art as well as through institutions of art and art history. Often in the form of power and domination relations in which what is considered non-male is subordinated and excluded.”

The protagonists of this exhibition have certainly played their part in breaking down this way of thinking.

Queer* Fem* magaZINES, until 4.06.2023 Rupertinum (location of the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg’s old town). The exhibition will be accompanied by several events until 4.06.2023.