Women in the Visual Arts

The Women in the Visual Arts Biennial produces and brings together initiatives that make women's talent visible and that have gender as the axis of reflection, debate and creation.

The BMAV, in its fifth edition, strengthens and reinforces the objectives proposed in its previous calls to make visible, support and disseminate the work, artistic, curatorial and research creation of women at national and international level.

The Women in the Visual Arts Biennial produces and collects initiatives carried out around the participation of women in the art system. It supports the objectives of real and effective equality of women and men in all areas, both public and private, related to the visual arts; recalling for this purpose the application of Article 26 of the Law of Equality that proposes actions that promote women and combat their discrimination in the field of artistic and intellectual creation and production.

We want the Women in the Visual Arts Biennial to set an example of best cultural management practices by promoting a horizontal, collaborative, participatory system in both working processes and team compositions.

This space for reflecting and thinking about feminism, gender and the visual arts is rounded out by the Forum that Mujeres en las Arts Visuales (MAV) organises every other year: FMM2015 in Barcelona and Madrid, FMM2017 in Seville and Madrid, FMM2019 in Vitoria and Madrid and FM2021 in Madrid and Valencia, FM2023 in Valladolid and Gran Canaria.

In recent decades, women are in the majority of graduates in Fine Arts, Art History, Aesthetics, Literature and Film programs, excelling mostly because of their high qualifications. When best practices are in place - transparency in selection criteria, blind evaluations and clear indicators - women enter positions of cultural responsibility in proportion to their training. However, when opaque selection criteria come into play, such as by direct designation or arbitrary personal interests, men monopolize (through the permanence of outdated models) the majority of positions of power and decision making. In this way, our country loses not only the possibility of integrating the best prepared women of our recent history, but also of having democratic legitimacy in culture.