Women + sculpture - a thread

In the 80s, an artist was commissioned to produce a piece of art in Belfast, to reflect the past history of an area, as a "red light district".

Louise Walsh, produced "Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker".

It isn't very "sexy"....

1/8
The artist depicted two working class women. They are literally dressed in the clothes of "women's work".

A typewriter
A telephone
A shopping basket
A clothes hanger
A colander
Clothes pegs
A dummy
A baby bottle
etc

2/8
One woman stands bold and strong, with her arm out protectively to a timid looking younger woman.

Embossed on that statue are a series of facts about "women's work"

1. "All women working in the home
receive no direct wage".

3/8
2. Women do two-thirds of the world's
work, receive only two per cent of the
world's income and own less than one per
cent of the world's assets.

3. The seven lowest paid jobs in
Northern Ireland are almost totally
done by women

4/8
4. Almost 40% of women working for
income in Northern Ireland are part-time
workers. These women are almost always
badly paid. They work without health
benefits, holiday entitlements or pension
schemes.

5. Woman wins long fight for pay equality
[newspaper headline]

5/8
Isn't it amazing how a piece of sculpture about a "red light district" can be totally without any form of sexualisation or nudity and can manage to convey so completely the humanity, agency, struggles & solidarity of women ......

6/8
whilst another sculpture, that was meant to represent a great intellectual thinker & radical feminist; shows women as an impersonal & formless mass with a sexy nude figure at the top, that the artist says is "more or less the shape we’d all like to be" ("we", meaning women)

7/8
If you visit Belfast's main bus station, you can't miss the two beauties (in the proper sense of that term) outside it. Please stop & look at them & think what that statue represents about a "red light area".

If you visit Newington Green. Please stop & put a coat on her!

End
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