The presented works belong to two projects: ‘Old Masters’ and ‘Shhh(e)...’

In the ‘Old Masters’ Ania Yilmaz reflects on the experience of being a woman in patriarchal culture (linked to abuse, objectification, being silenced and powerless against institutionalized male power). She confronts how, growing up, she has internalized the male perspective, unable to relate to the concept of passive femininity proposed in the majority of cultural texts.Through references to the works of art from Western canon ( i.e. ‘Susanna and the Elders’ by Rubens, ‘Christ and Adulteress’ by Lucas Cranach The Younger, ‘Procuress’ by Vermeer), the artist looks at the patriarchal codes of behavior, that are at the bases of Western culture and that we are entangled in till this very day. She repeats the paintings that signify the ‘male gaze’ to expose the cultural mechanism of objectification of female body by male authors.

In ‘Shhh(e)...’, in order to deflate the balloon of patriarchy, the artist creates images of female rebellion and domination over the archetypical ‘white men’ (the patriarch, culture-maker, colonialist, considering himself the universal man, an alleged “measure of all things”). ‘Shhh(e)...’ is a playful expression of female power and disagreement to the status quo of male dominance, exposing the emptiness/illusion of the male power (myth necessary for maintaining the patriarchal structure). The project is a flowering offshoot of the ‘Old Masters’. By playing with the imagery from history of art and reversing its power structure Ania Yilmaz reclaims the canonical narration - in agreement with her inner feeling of power (and anger). Through change of the roles in the historical paintings (men taking the role of women) she invites the spectators to face what happens in them when the structure of domination is reversed.The anger, after centuries of patriarchal abuse, should be expressed, not repressed, in order for healing and change to happen.