women´s problems: white balls for rein wolfs
In 1995 the feminist collective Guerilla Girls protested in front of the Stedelijk Amsterdam under the slogan White Balls on Walls against the ¨machoshow¨ going on there at the time. These words were picked up by Sarah Vos as the title of a documentary (2022) she made about Stedelijk Amsterdam and the journey of museum director Rein Wolfs and his team into making the staff and collection of the museum more inclusive. At the time, the world was approaching Christman and New Year´s Eve, and Yelena was writing postcards to the artworld to wish happy holidays to curators. As she was sitting in the hospital waiting room in anticipation of a CT scan to check up on her cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, Yelena was checking emails on her phone and decided to order the customized balls for her Christman tree. Just as Yelena was making her order, she noticed the balls were available in different colors, one of the options being white… Then it struck Yelena that she should send white balls with women´s problems to Stedelijk Amsterdam! It was a gimmick, Yelena thought that Rein Wolfs could use some Christman decorations to remind him of his inclusivity mission. Naively, Yelena ordered 8 white balls to feature performalist artworks that she made for An Artist Residency in Motherhood about her experience with pre-eclampsia and her stillborn child. Yelena kept the ball with her living daughter for herself, but it was reunited with the rest shortly after. The 7 white balls with women´s problems that Yelena sent to Rein Wolfs were returned to her two weeks later, and that is how White Balls for Rein Wolfs turned from a gimmick into an artwork. Later, Yelena applied to the open call for Salon des Refusés at IDFX in Breda with the now artwork and its letter of refusal that guaranteed an exhibition. Thus it was done! However, it seems that women´s problems are not welcome in Stedelijk Amsterdam as long as they are not presented by famous artists such as Anne Imhof, Nan Goldin and Marina Abramovic. Artists that abandoned motherhood for a career, that choose abstraction over the personal is political, and when raising political issues seem to focus on others or the collective good, but not women´s problems, because that is not done. So, my conclusion is that women´s problems need a bigger Trojan horse to make it into Stedelijk Amsterdam! There is much work to be done for the new generation of women artists, firstly we need to reclaim the personal is political and stop being ashamed of the basic things that make us women, stop thinking that the category women is obsolete because we need to facilitate everyone else, and involve it in our art as we break through the glass ceiling!
