Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes

by: , November 10, 2018

© Samanta Tello

For far too long, women have been silenced by patriarchal societies in most, if not all, cultures. In communities worldwide, and for time immemorial, there has been a persistent push to dampen and to control women’s voices. At times, this silencing has been done violently, yet sometimes it is done in a very gentle, subtle, even playful way. Women still speak, but too often our voices are ignored, belittled, mocked, interrupted or shouted down. The strength and depth of this silencing varies depending upon cultural context, but I think that the majority of women have felt it to some degree.

Of course, this makes us angry, but I believe that we can rise above our anger and try to remove some of the barriers to our success — by talking, sharing, and communicating our thoughts and experiences with each other. Through my work, Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes, I wish to impart a message of empowerment— graphically demonstrating how our silenced voices and unheard ideas, when brought together, can, indeed, prove to be our strength.

Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes (Burnt wood, gold/silver leaf, stains and acrylic on wood panel 36×36″, 2016)

I am inspired by the stories, ideas, and courage of the women I meet. Every day, I am reminded how women are agents of change. With the interracial communication between female figures in my work, I seek to represent the power of unity of action that gives all women a unified voice – how one woman’s voice can spark a chorus of women’s voices and create a cultural shift; how sharing stories can make all of us feel less alone; and with this support we may be able to find the strength to advocate both for ourselves and women as a collective force for change. These female figures still have their red lips closed, because even today, they encounter many obstacles to speaking up and being heard, but this is temporary. Women around the world are starting to share their authentic, sincere, voices that in many cases have been kept silent for years, or for generations — sometimes because it was too painful to share, or because they were too afraid of being shamed, not understood or blamed. Today, women are doing it together, for themselves and for future generations to come.

I think it is essential for us to maintain our courage and persistence, and lay claim to this moment being our time and our turn. I believe one of the ways patriarchal power is upheld is by encouraging competition between women. In Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes, the women I present are interconnected, like parts of a puzzle, with each piece, each woman, each culture, forming a proud part of a whole that would be incomplete if even one were left behind.

Among the media I use for my artwork are metal leaves, mainly gold and silver, and pyrography (drawing by burning with a heated metallic point). I burned each woman’s silhouette on to a large birch wood panel and used different shades of wood stains to represent each woman’s unique cultural attributes — letting the wood grain show through their faces, symbolizing that the primary support underneath each of them is the same material, the same wood, the same essence.

I hope this unity of female action becomes a perennial movement of strength which we can pass on to future generations. This message is vital to me as a woman, as an artist, and as a mother. Because to speak and to be heard is to have power over our lives and our narratives; and to be silenced is to be powerless.

Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes, Hearts in San Francisco project (Acrylic, aluminum, and 24 karats gold leaf on fiberglass heart sculpture, 5 feet tall x 6 feet wide; 400 pounds, 2018)

 

Silenced Voices of Everyday Sheroes, Hearts in San Francisco project (Acrylic, aluminum, and 24 karats gold leaf on fiberglass heart sculpture, 5 feet tall x 6 feet wide; 400 pounds, 2018)

 

Download article

Newsletter

Feeling inspired by MAI? Dedicated to intersectional gender politics in visual culture? Want to keep your feminist imagination on fire? MAI newsletter will help refresh your zeal for feminism with first-hand news on our new content. 

Subscribe below to stay up-to-date.

* We'll never share your email address with any third parties.

WHO SUPPORTS US

The team of MAI supporters and contributors is always expanding. We’re honoured to have a specialist collective of editors, whose enthusiasm & talent gave birth to MAI.

However, to turn our MAI dream into reality, we also relied on assistance from high-quality experts in web design, development and photography. Here we’d like to acknowledge their hard work and commitment to the feminist cause. Our feminist ‘thank you’ goes to:


Dots+Circles – a digital agency determined to make a difference, who’ve designed and built our MAI website. Their continuous support became a digital catalyst to our idealistic project.
Guy Martin – an award-winning and widely published British photographer who’s kindly agreed to share his images with our readers

Chandler Jernigan – a talented young American photographer whose portraits hugely enriched the visuals of MAI website
Matt Gillespie – a gifted professional British photographer who with no hesitation gave us permission to use some of his work
Julia Carbonell – an emerging Spanish photographer whose sharp outlook at contemporary women grasped our feminist attention
Ana Pedreira – a self-taught Portuguese photographer whose imagery from women protests beams with feminist aura
And other photographers whose images have been reproduced here: Cezanne Ali, Les Anderson, Mike Wilson, Annie Spratt, Cristian Newman, Peter Hershey