After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen

This exhibition included more than thirty works completed since 1988 by leading “unofficial” Russian artists. Like their Western avant-garde counterparts, many of these artists work in photographic, textile and performance-based media. Their art explored the contradictions in the roles assigned to Soviet women in the post-totalitarian climate of “refeminization” and disemployment. On a public discussion panel, faculty from three Halifax universities first evoked the fascinating history of art under totalitarianism, then deconstructed the feminist “orthodoxy” of the thinking behind the exhibition.