Arco 2023 dispenses with its space for women because it was "binary and reducing"

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Maribel López, the director of Arco, the Madrid Contemporary Art Fair, explained that the new edition (open from tomorrow to Sunday) will not include a specific space dedicated to women artists, as in recent years.

According to López,

into their offer, so that the function is fulfilled.

In addition, López has said that the approach seemed

and that it became a "women against men", when some people do not fit that definition.

The latest data available on the gender gap is from the Women of Audiovisual Arts Association (MAV) and revealed that, in 2018, 19

at ARCO were women.

"I cannot schedule the fair, although I am tempted as the director. The artistic content has to come hand in hand with the galleries," says López.

This year, 15 of the 20 individual projects that will be exhibited at the fair are signed by women.

The measure has received criticism among professionals in the art market.

Semiramis González, exhibition curator and cultural manager specializing in gender, believes that the suppression of is not good.

"We already know that

, anyone with a bit of background in history and anthropology knows that a patriarchal system depends on inequality based on women, and that the way to change it is by counteracting it with quotas, with figures and with data," he says.

"The art market is, like many other sectors, tremendously unequal in relation to women -he argues-; in Arco we have figures, every year, of a 20-25% presence of women, when graduates in Fine Arts are 70%. What does this mean? Well,

, on the contrary, they will stagnate or get worse. Not to mention that the prices of the artists' works are much less than those of men. A museum director told me some time ago that for what they had bought the work of an artist they had bought works from three women".

"The visibility and public relevance that the art market week has in Spain is significant, so we cannot continue selling ourselves as a progressive, feminist country and with high levels of defense of women if later, in our most international fair, they are Just a ridiculous number. That half of the human population is in a minority is not feminist but,

, "says the commissioner.

According to Maribel Doménech, president of the Association of Women Artists, "the association is looking forward to the Madrid fairs and their percentages of participation of female artists, as well as their sales, to analyze and publish in our observatory. Last year we saw a

in the female presence in the galleries of Arco, but it is not enough, it will never be enough until there is equal representation and real equality is achieved".

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