WOMART by BTOY
Olot
7.4.2018
On April 7 of 2018, the artist Btoy made a large-format mural on the facade of the Museu dels Sants, located in the city of Olot. In this piece, the artist intended to capture the will of the working woman and her strength through a cheerful and lively range of colours. This intervention is part of the Womart project, an initiative of Rebobinart that aims to reclaim the need to recognize and make more visible the female talent in the visual arts and promote gender equality in all artistic visual disciplines. The realization of this mural has been promoted by the Xarxa Transversal with the support of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
In the video, BTOY on women's presence in urban art: «getting to where men have a space is hard for women; it isn't even 1%». She talks about her three pillars —education, exhibitions and murals—, about turning towards women who are alive, and about the Sants mural, made as a collaborative work between the museum, the artist and the public.
The video in text (abridged) (translated from Catalan)3 min 6 s
I don't think women's presence in art has improved at all. That is, in contemporary art it turns out it has less and less visibility. Note that not a single retrospective has been held in the major contemporary art museums: this is not a Catalan thing, it is everywhere.
As a woman working in urban art, yes, there are women of us who paint, but getting to where men have a space is hard for women: it isn't even 1%, practically speaking. So the only thing we can do is keep working. People have to be given a cultural grounding, society has to be educated, and we have to start setting ratios within festivals, because in the end society is men and women.
I usually work in places other than where I live. I moved to Menorca a few years ago and it actually suited me to put some distance between myself and my work, which is somewhat itinerant. At first I worked more from moods, from emotions; now not so much. Now I am in a more pedagogical phase, and now I work more with women who are alive. There are something like three pillars —education, exhibitions and murals— and that is where I develop.
In the end it was a collaborative work: it was like a kind of triangle between what the museum, I and the public could say. And in the end it is a person who lives there, who stands in a way for the craft trades of Sants. The thing about a mural is that it is a public place, a public space, and everyone sees it; which means the question of who she is always comes up, and then you can explain who that person is. She is made visible: she becomes a kind of icon.
Abridged version: direct quotes are kept; repetitions, overlapping speech and passages unrelated to the project are left out.
