| A belated observance of International Women’s Day will be undertaken tomorrow by the Guyana Women’s Artists Association (GWAA). The observance, which will take the form of an artistic exhibition, will be done in collaboration with the Dutch Bottle Cafe, North Road, Bourda, Georgetown, the venue for the activity.The 100th anniversary observance of International Women’s Day was done globally under the United Nations theme ‘Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women’ on Tuesday.According to President of the association, Jynell Osborne, a decision was taken to celebrate the significant milestone for women with a small but significant exhibition of Fine Art. The exhibition will continue until April 11, 2011.“Our aim is to unveil visual essays of our sentiments of the place of the woman, 100 years after her cry for equality.”According to Osborne, “our expressions explore our suffrage and our success as women, our thoughts are universal.” And so on the auspicious occasion, though belated, GWAA, according to the President, will be paying tribute to some outstanding women stalwarts, who are no longer with us, but were instrumental in paving the way for “us twenty three years ago.”The outstanding women, Osborne noted, are Stephanie Correia, Majorie Broodhagen, Agnes Jones, Maylene Duncan and Irene Gonsalves. She explained that it was because of these women and many others, that the GWAA is today able to stand tall. GWAA was brought into being with the aim of stimulating interest and encourage the creative effort of women artists whose activities are focused on different areas of the visual arts as displayed in individual and collective ventures. It is also designed to support those members whose goals are directed towards personal gratifications, careers or self employment.Through the association, which was born out of a need to support women artists, the work of local women artists is promoted. Osborne revealed to this newspaper that back in the day women artists were not properly represented, a state of affairs which has been greatly reversed with the introduction of the association.According to her, the entity is geared to stimulate interest in art produced by women as there is always the risk of “you fading into the background. We try a lot to stimulate our artists themselves with a lot of interactive sessions, workshops and exhibitions…“We try to promote their work.”She said that while there may be a few good artists there is hardly ever a forum for them to showcase their work. A series of workshop, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank was held last year to promote the creative artists as produced by local women artists.Secretary of the association, Sharon Jordan,wholesale jerseys, said that the association, as at the end of last year, had about 30 active members and since its establishment there have been about 100 registered artists. However, it has been affected by migration, retirement and even deaths but yet continues to thrive, Jordan asserted. |
