Marianne is a Transfeminist (Originally from a poster for The National War Loan of France, illustrated by Georges Scott, 1917)

Acrylic marker on cardboard
170,2 x 123,2 x 14 cm

With this work, artist Andrea Bowers reappropriates a poster designed by French illustrator and war correspondent Georges Scott, urging French citizens to participate in the First World War effort by lending money to the French state. This reappropriation is common in her work, in which art and activism are inextricably linked. Andrea Bowers combines visual research and political positions in one gesture, in a work that encompasses multiple media: video, photography, sculpture, drawing, installation… “I began collecting these agitprop images because they illustrate women who embody progressive and radical left politics often in a social realist style. As the collection has grown I have become acutely aware of the absence of trans women from recorded political history. With this project I want to insert representations of trans liberation into these past histories and simultaneously create new graphics and images in support of the current trans feminist movement.”¹ The cardboard chosen by the artist is reminiscent of protest signs, the everyday medium on which civic protest has been written and expressed throughout history. 

1. ¹ Press release, “Whose Feminism Is it Anyway?”, Andrew Kreps Gallery, 2016