Feminist art 

For a long time I was not aware that the emotional faces I paint are feminist art. The feeling faces are a variation of my own face and the expression of my emotional world, my often frozen face, because I can not immediately express my feelings verbally. Again and again my feeling faces have been called feminist art.

Cover: Remaining true to myself, 2022. acrylic on canvas, 20x25cm. CARINA SCHUBERT

Image: I am many, 2021. acrylic on canvas, 40x50cm. CARINA SCHUBERT

Why are my emotional faces Feminist contemporary art?

Because so many of us women are socialized to smile outwardly, to be friendly, to be pretty, to be pleasant, to be responsible for harmony, and that our anger is not seemly. That we are made out to be hysterical, bitchy, difficult, too sensitive. I, too, have not had access to my anger for a long time. I have always been given the feeling that my anger is exaggerated. That it is wrong. That it comes over me like a disease. As a child I heard sentences like "Is the devil in your head again?". And because of that, I suppressed it from a very young age. I swallowed them. I kept them bottled up inside me. And turned them against myself. And these emotional faces that I paint are all of that. These faces don't have hair, because that's what women are always expected to have, too. Beauty, beautiful hair. "Men like long hair" I often heard when I kept thinking about cutting my long hair.

Image: Sensitive superheroine, 2022. acrylic on canvas, 24x30 cm. CARINA SCHUBERT

My emotional faces are not about outward appearances. It's about the innermost. It is about the feelings. About our feelings. About my feelings. To which no one can or should say that they are false or exaggerated. And my emotional faces don't laugh either. I have often been told that I seem aloof or arrogant because I look so serious. Or the sentence "Don't look so angry" I have heard a thousand times. When I think, I don't laugh. And I think a lot. I am a head person. My head rattles inexhaustibly. And that was also often attributed to me as negative. "Don't worry your beautiful head". "You're overthinking everything again". And all these sentences and beliefs have made me doubt myself for a very long time. About my perception. About my feelings. And they often still do.

With these emotional faces - sometimes they are alone, sometimes they are to mehrt - I want to give myself and other people confidence. Confidence in their feelings. In their anger, their fear, their sadness and their joy. In their entire range of feelings, which every human being has and is allowed to have. Confidence that they are allowed to show their feelings. Confidence that they can go their own individual way. And courage to join forces with other women. I constantly get to know such interesting inspiring women and feel so strengthened in my being a woman and my feelings through their stories and experiences.

 

Image: Girlfriend 3, 2021. acrylic on canvas, 50x70cm. CARINA SCHUBERT

Yes, that's why my emotional faces are feminist art. Like a vision board on the wall, these faces are meant to remind women every day that they are great the way they are, their inner and outer.... And that there are good phases and bad phases and that honest exchange with other women always helps. That this is about collective false beliefs and not about individual failure.

Buy my feminist art online now

My feminist emotional faces I paint and draw in Vienna in small and large formats. You can find them in my online store. I ship my art worldwide.

Artists and feminist art

On the page wikiart.org you can find exciting information about feminist art and feminist artists: "Feminist art refers to an art movement. The term originated in the late 1960s in the USA (feminist art). In Feminist Art, artists explicitly address female identity as well as women's collective experiences and grapple with conventional gender constructions and art norms."