Rhonda Ayliffe: A Bit of Herstory

Women have been making art for a long time, no doubt as long as men have, but we often don't get credit for it, or for the many other activities we engage in that aren't related to childbearing or housewifery. The first time I heard the term "herstory" I had one of those pivotal moments of recognition. "Yeah," I thought, "it's our story too!" All these years later, the term continues to resonate. So when I stumbled over Australian artist Rhonda Ayliffe's work of the same name, I was immediately drawn to it, because of the title. How much more delightful to see what she's done with the concept. Here it is in all its glory, several feet of muslin-backed history textbook pages laid side by side. You can imagine there's nary a mention of a woman in them. (Click to enlarge.) But they're covered by these large black splotches.

And here's a detail, where you can see that those defacing black circles are the images of lace doilies, the quintessential image of housewifery, each connected with a thread, to say that you may not see us in the words on these pages, but we were here, and here, and here, and here and oh yeah, here in a big way, and even back here.

The pattern  is reminiscent of two-dimensional maps of three-dimensional networks and gives a depth to the flat surface of those words that they would otherwise not have. Women often think of themselves as colonized, but this turns the notion on its head: each of those lacy figures looks much like a colony with its own individual patterns, yet interconnected. I love the layers of complexity and ideas in this piece.

The rest of Ayliffe's work is just as interesting and multimedia. There's a great book work called "All Steamed Up" that uses a vegetable steamer as its template, just to give one example. Go take a look at her blog too.