Projects – Womart

In 2018, WomArt arises as a response to the evident masculinization of the urban art sector, where the big names are still men and women remain as a footnote. In a contestatory way, the artist Aïda Gómez would make the intervention Glass Path in Mataró: an installation that makes visible the glass ceiling and the obstacles that women must face to reach artistic recognition.
Glass Path would be the first work of the Womart project, with which Rebobinart incorporated a first gender perspective to accommodate female talent and that would be accompanied by nine interventions of nine more artists in different cities of the Xarxa Transversal: Pedra in Girona, Monica Rikic at the Museu de Granollers, Elbi Elem at the Museu de l’Ebre in Tortosa, BTOY in Olot, Minuskula at the Casa de la Cultura in Sant Cugat, Hyuro at the Casal de Joves La Palma in Reus, Paula Bonet at the Museu de l’Empordà in Figueres, OVNI in Manresa and Lula Goce in Vilanova i la Geltrú. Once the collaboration with the Xarxa Transversal ended, WomArt continued its activity within Rebobinart with the Womart JAM of 2020, 2021 and 2022, as well as with the Wall Claim of Killa EK at the Farinera del Clot in 2021.
WomArt focuses on female recognition and representation in urban art, how their agency has been marginalized and oppressed in an ever-growing market. Female producers have a growing demand for public interventions, but have a portfolio of artists marked by heteropatriarchal standards that need to be diversified. This bias also permeates the perception of audiences, who consider by default that the authorship of urban art is dominated by men. This bias reflects a reality in urban art studies: for example, in the reference anthology World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti (2013), by John Fekner and Rafael Schacter, only 3 out of 97 artists are women.
What to do in response to this perceptual bias? How to vindicate female talent without being paternalistic? Moreover, how to vindicate diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation without repression and violence in the urban art world?
These are future challenges that must be faced with the complexity they deserve. But nowadays WomArt is not a separate and differentiated project from Rebobinart, but has become part of its DNA in a systemic way, questioning the process of choosing and producing the murals and festivals to tend towards a less normative urban art.