NDSM XPO XVII WOMEN HOUSE AMSTERDAM (May 16 -July 6, 2025) will reflect on the status of women in the arts in the 21st century by revisiting and highlighting the issues that have constrained women’s lives and artistic expressions. It focuses on a persistent paradox in the arts: despite the expansion of feminist discourse and the increasing visibility of women artists, their contributions are often overlooked due to systemic sexism, which deprives them of institutional recognition and appreciation. It places a particular emphasis on the relationship between art and gender, in relation to the social factors that contribute to the vulnerable position of women. In particular, black women, immigrants, mothers, lesbians, transgender, and older women artists, whose proposals are often marginalised in dominant artistic narratives.
WOMEN HOUSE AMSTERDAM encourages female artists to submit proposals that explore women’s diverse experiences and challenges in the current context. Related to body, sexuality, racism, motherhood, domesticity, gender work, unequal pay, ageing, migration, gender violence and femicide, as well as works dedicated to women in art. Welcome are also proposals related to female memories and subjectivities, including anti-colonial, anti-systemic, indigenous and ecofeminist voices committed to promoting peace, preserving the planet and fostering cooperation, sisterhood and community.
WOMEN HOUSE AMSTERDAM is curated by Uruguayan architect and curator Alejandra Muñoz (PhD) and Brazilian visual artist and art researcher Neyde Lantyer. They initiated the project in 2024 in Brazil under the name ‘Casa de Mulheres’ at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, Mam-ba. The exhibition paid homage to the first feminist exhibition ‘Womanhouse’ from 1972, by artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro in Los Angeles, USA. In its second edition, the exhibition travels from Salvador da Bahia, in southern Brazil, to Amsterdam with the aim of amplifying intersectional feminist voices in contemporary art discourse and reaffirming the transformative potential of art and feminist practices in rewriting history, creating utopias and envisioning a new future.