Hidden Championnes
Ridiculed,
ignored,
(almost) forgotten
Female faces to 1000 years of civilisation history.
An art project by Roxana Panetta
Hidden Championnes
A portrait painting series of women to make them visible and recognize their contributions
Series I: Historical Portraits
Pretend: These portraits simulate the style, material and modes of representation of the era in which the woman worked. These are the kind of portraits that are missing from the major museums.
Serie II: Semi-abstract Portraits
The interplay of chance (ink) and realistic representation (oil) obscures and disturbs the view of the portrait subject. It is necessary to take a closer look in order to recognize the woman.
(English coming soon, overview of portraits in German)
Hidden Championnes — (almost) forgotten Women
If we go to the great museums of the western world, we find a few portraits of women. These are portraits of regents, saints and women from mythology. Very rarely the wife of a painter who has become rich. But where are the women writers? The female composers? The doctors? The painters? The researchers? Because they did exist. But why aren't they hanging in these rooms?
It is time for a change
I suspect they simply don't exist, these portraits of women who made an impact in their time and produced great things. Yet there has been a wide variety of female achievement for centuries - we can find female biographies that are dazzling and fascinating, going all the way back to antiquity.
I give them a face
My ‘Hidden Championnes’ are portraits of women whose achievements have remained invisible in our current historiography - partly because there are no (traceable) portraits of them and we are therefore unable to form a picture of them. In awe in front of the achievements of these women from past eras, I create their portraits in the style of the respective era. With my historical-looking portraits, I want to create a surprising momentum: when we stand in front of these portraits of women and learn something about them, we should realise that we had no idea that such a life was a reality centuries ago. ~Roxana Panetta
