People are normalized by depiction. It situates them in positions that, with the passing of time, become identities. Reality requires repetition in order for meaning to settle and artworks help to reinforce these positions. The supremacy of men over women responds to historic and socio-cultural constructs. Contemporary feminism connects with post-structuralism, analysing the construction of meaning and power relationships, and why certain languages and meanings become normativised. Pablo Jansana channels his interest in social change into a study of subcultures and activist movements. All the women represented by the artist in his second solo exhibition at The Goma have played a significant role in the fight to break the gender dichotomy, as well as being actively involved in other struggles against racism, homophobia and/or the wars taking place in their respective time. So, for instance, we have Hannah Höch, a key player in the Dada movement in Berlin and a member of Novembergruppe, who questioned canonical depictions of feminine beauty. Like other women featured in this show, in her time Höch was relegated to a secondary plane and did not receive recognition in art circuits until the 1970s. Pablo Jansana’s pieces are subtended by the relationship between form, time and ideology. Though altering prints using acrylic, resin, gauze and aluminium, they all start out from an image recognisable to the spectator. The image is then destabilised and hindered by means of abstraction and an accumulation of materials. The three-dimensional contractions and folds speak to the risk in our current society of repeating the same mistakes of a dominant discourse.

One can barely make out the presence of the male gender in just two works, overshadowed by the female focus of this show. One of them shows Abstract Expressionism painters, the other one depicts in a portrait five of the six members of the Munich “Cosmic” Circle excluding Fanny Zu Reventlow, the only woman in this neo-pagan circle.