Cet ouvrage fait suite à la tenue d’un colloque international pluridisciplinaire organisé les 19 et 20 septembre 2019 au Centre Pompidou et au musée d’Orsay, à Paris, en partenariat avec l’association AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions). Intitulé Faire œuvre. La formation et la professionnalisation des artistes femmes aux XIXe et XXe siècles, le colloque entendait dresser un état actuel de la recherche sur l’accession des artistes femmes aux structures d’enseignement, en France et à l’étranger, qu’il s’agisse des ateliers, des académies privées ou des écoles publiques.
While the feminist struggles of the 1970s were influential in the field of visual arts, the crossover between artistic creation and feminist activism was not as straightforward in the French context. The works of Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki stood out as an exception at the time. The duo of Greek experimental filmmakers, visual artists and theoreticians moved to Paris in 1975 and built a feminist-driven body of work, as evidenced among other things by the Super 8 women’s workshops they held in the 1980s. This article relies on the Klonaris/Thomadaki archives to present these workshops, their teaching methods and the ways in which they interacted with the militant and artistic context. These alternative spaces brought together women of various occupations and encouraged individual expression, much like the women-only discussion groups and artists’ collectives of the 1970s. In addition to offering technical training, they gave women a place to meet, create and campaign together.