Vidéo Femmes
Dedicated to the memory of Alexandra Meijer-Werner

Since the establishment of the feminist movement, and the integration of women artworks to major museum collections, women artists have become notorious and essential to understand contemporary art. Today, we know about thousands of female artists who have been contributing not only to the expansion of cultural references, but also to reinforce the role of women in today’s society.

When video art appeared many artists started to explore the creative possibilities of this new artistic discipline. Several women approached video using it as an effective and powerful tool for women expression, documenting and legitimizing feminine actions and performances.
In Venezuela, the first video art exhibition happened in the mid 70’s at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas Sofía Imber. Artists like Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Antonio Muntadas, Shigeko Kubota and Charlotte Moorman came to Caracas to perform and show their works. The presence of these artists nurtured some of the local artists and established a firm basis for the new generations. At that time women artists Nela Ochoa and Nan Gonzáles were experimenting with this medium to create and produce art. At the present, there are three generations of Venezuelan artists who have maintained the tradition initiated by the founders of video art. In this context, women have played a key role to set up a starting point for the study and use of video art in Venezuela.

Vidéo Femmes is the first group encounter of Venezuelan women video artists. Most of the videos presented here are works created specially for this exhibition. Participants are
Nela Ochoa (1953), Nan Gonzáles (1956), Conny Viera (1964), Diana López (1968), Odalis Valdivieso (1969), and Alexandra Meijer-Werner (1972-2002) who sadly died in June of this year on an airplane accident.

In the same way that Latin American artists transcended the stigma of nationalism and became global artists with global interests, it seems that women artists surpassed their main focus on the woman gender, but without forgetting their female condition. As a result, the subjects presented on this selection are all related to universal human concerns, such as freedom, hope, violence, and human origins, among others, developed from diverse perspectives, including biological/animal, sociological, historical, industrial, and the mix of all of them.

Vidéo Femmes attempts to expose an unexplored vision of Venezuelan video art practice, following the traces of three generations of women artists that have established a recognized and valued body of works.

Yucef Merhi,
New York. June, 2002