03/07/2025
lecture
The essentialist ecofeminist turn in visual arts
A short insight into its enabling background conditions
Lecture by Anca Bucur
Lecture by Anca Bucur
- For several years now, we are witnessing a resurgence of ecofeminist movements across the globe, with neither art institutions, nor cultural workers being foreign to it. On the contrary, within the ecofeminist tides that continue to rise up throughout the world, art spaces are portraits of active and ardent support. No wonder then that ecofeminism has become once again one of the most important debates in the visual arts.
- Nevertheless, despite this seemingly promising scenario, it’s worth remembering that ecofeminism doesn’t always designate an all-encompassing emancipatory notion, as our failing liberal democracies insist on making us believe. Ecofeminism is not a monolithic ideology but encompasses a range of ideologies among which essentialist ecofeminism is hegemonic. Under the present multiple crises orchestrated by capitalism, essentialist ecofeminism seems to be unhinderedly thriving, being widely embraced by both liberal and neoconservative feminists.
- This lecture aims at looking deeper into the background conditions that gave rise to this essentialist ecofeminist turn, into the relation between nature and women as it was historically forged by a capitalist system of production, and into the means to counter it through a socialist ecofeminist understanding of the world.
- Anca Bucur
- is a visual artist whose work is based on an understanding of art as a political tool. In recent years, her research has focused on topics such as neo-colonial extractivist industries, the socialist collectivization of agriculture, and the relation between feminized bodies and nature at the point of production. She is the author of various texts published in collective volumes and brochures. She is part of the editorial collective frACTalia and the Cooperative for Research and Political Action "Ecaterina Arbore". She lives and works in Bucharest.
- The lecture by Anca Bucur is delivered as part of „The Common Field” a long-term artistic and research project, focused on the green surroundings of U–jazdowski.
