An Interview with Katy Hessel

As in many other spheres, women have had to overcome significant barriers in working in the art world—but the narrative is starting to be rewritten. At the forefront of this charge for gender parity is Katy Hessel, founder of the Instagram account @thegreatwomenartists. Hessel uses her social media and curatorial projects to recognize the work of female artists past and present. Her posts and exhibitions are educative yet accessible, as she is concerned with the inclusion and representation of both artists and audiences.

As the art world is becoming increasingly eager to make up for centuries of gender inequality, Hessel’s work is a guiding force for change. Here, she talks to FORM about politics, podcasts and her favorite artists.   

Dani Yan: You are working on so many things right now and I know you’re constantly busy, so thank you for taking the time to chat. Let’s start by talking a bit about your personal background—how did you get to where you are?

Katy Hessel: I grew up in London, I went to University here, at UCL, where I studied History of Art. I was at university when I was studying the work of Alice Neel, who really prompted my awareness of the gender imbalance in art history. In 2015, I went to an art fair where I didn’t see any female artists, so decided to do something about it—which became my Instagram account.

I’ve always been obsessed with museums—growing up in London, I’ve been going to the Tate since I was really small, going to the Turbine Hall and seeing installations by Louise Bourgeois and Anish Kapoor and just being completely blown away and thinking I have to work in this industry, which is so mind-blowingly cool. I definitely think it’s an elitist art world, but I also think there is an aspect of it that is just such an enjoyment—and that’s what it should be about, it shouldn’t be about who can appreciate art more, it’s about everyone coming into this conversation. I work at Victoria Miro now, where I’ve been since I was 18 when I started interning there after school and working at the front desk. From there, I’ve just continued to do this, really. 

D: Your Instagram account, @thegreatwomenartists, has gained a large following and made some real changes in the art world. In your own words, how would you describe your Instagram?

K: My Instagram celebrates the work of women artists on a daily basis—featuring artists of color and everyone from historical figures to young graduates from London grad schools. It's a total mix of mediums, histories, backgrounds, diversities, et cetera, because I basically want to learn about and also teach people about the broadest aspects of women in art history possible. The reason I don’t have a focused attention is that at the moment, there’s so much work to be done. Just like how Kimberly Drew focuses on African American artists, in a broad sense, it’s because there’s so much work to be done. It’s not like looking at one section of art or one movement in art history, because—at the moment—you have to really look at the kind of broad range of what women have contributed to art.

D: Your Instagram has been very successful and you obviously put much of your time into it, but I know you also do a lot outside of the social media realm. Could you tell me a bit more about what else you’ve been working on recently?

K: I’m a curator, so I curate lots of exhibitions. I’ve curated three exhibitions in London. The first one was in 2017, which looked at women artists who used Instagram as a platform for their careers—that was really timely and looked at the correlation between the rise of female artists and the rise of social media. I think the internet has really given people a voice like nothing before because it's a very democratic platform. I did that, and then I did an exhibition last year which was called In the Company of, which celebrated women artists past and present. Then this summer I curated an exhibition at Victoria Miro, where I work, which brought in three new artists and very much dealt with immigration, womanhood, identity, etc. And then I run a residency every year at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, which is in between Milan and Venice. I send out three or four artists at one time for a six week period and then I curate an exhibition of the work they make there. The second installment of that is happening in November and December of this year. And then I work with a lot of other institutions like Tate—in February, I took over a floor of the Tate Modern for Tate Late, which was women-artist-themed and had an installation of a giant eight-meter-high timeline of women artists in history. I usually talk twice a week about women artists, whether that’s giving a tour around an exhibition—like at Tate St. Ives which I did recently—or sitting on a panel. I love it. I also present lots of films for institutions, as I did recently for Barbican. 

D: Both with Instagram and in curating exhibitions, you are constantly coming across new work. How do you find art and then decide what to feature and what not to?

K: It’s definitely not a case of deciding who not to feature, it’s totally a learning process. I do not have a bank of artwork. For example, today I have a rough idea of what I want to post but I’ll write it later after work and sort that out. It’s all very instinctive—I read so much in terms of articles or books or general research, I try to see every exhibition possible, Instagram is an insane tool because I follow so many of my favorite artists and art historians from places like New York, who I would love to get to but I’m not physically there, so those are all ways that I find work. It’s kind of up to me, it's very instinctive, I really like it. It’s almost like a diary in a way.

D: We're starting to see some efforts towards producing more gender equality in the art world What can we do to further improve the situation as well as make it more permanent?

K: I think the biggest thing is scholarship. The more books that are written about female artists, the better. If you look at some of the bibles of art history—for example Gombrich’s The Story of Art, which is a sort of an introductory bible, includes one woman artist in the back—it’s ridiculous. The fact that students are looking at these books still, is very archaic. I think that education is another huge one—you have to change the syllabus, you have to focus on diverse artists, whether that's women, or people of color, or anything else. It’s imperative that people from a young age learn about all different artists. I mean, definitely until I was 18, I only genuinely only learned about white male artists. That’s quite shocking, considering I grew up in the 2000s. So education is a massive thing. And I also think collections are important. For example, it’s all very well having exhibitions by female artists like “yay, this is feminism, support white feminism.” But actually it’s about museums acquiring works by female artists, so we know those artworks are safe and that they will be spotlighted forever. 

D: I agree completely. I like this observation from art critic Peter Schjeldahl that says art is like “Here are the answers. What were the questions?” How do you think the “questions,” so to say, that are asked and answered by women artists are different from those of male artists?

K: I think it’s just a different perspective. Art is such a unique thing, its very difficult grouping artists and categorizing them as the same things because there’s so much more conversation to be hand. I think that it’s about women artist’s stories, because women have different lives from men—we do. Obviously our bodies are different, our heads are different. Whatever gender you are, it’s about those experiences that need to be put into artwork. For example, women were banned from apprenticeships in the Renaissance era, so you can’t just see art from a white male perspective. That’s not history, we need to reflect history in a democratic and fair way.

D: Absolutely. Much of your work explores the intersection between art and feminism, as well as some other socio-political issues. What role do you think art should and can play in politics today?

K: I think art can change people’s minds. Art for me is a visual history—that’s so cliche, but I genuinely learned about things like the civil rights movement through art. In that sort of sense, I learned about what people were doing then, in the 60s, but also the poignancy of how it’s reflective of what’s going on today. I’m not sure if you’ve been able to see Soul of Nation, which was at the Tate and is currently at the Broad in LA, but it’s so reflective of black history. For me, growing up in London, I never really learned about that. So that completely opened my eyes. That art was made in a very political time, and we are living in very political times at the moment so it's really interesting to refer to the past and see how it’s maybe not so different today.

The more political, the more disheveled the world is, the more likely artists are going to be more activistic and actually create more interesting work. For example, at the Venice Biennale this year, Ralph Rugoff created this amazing installation called May You Live in Interesting Times, which is all about today’s world and I love that. You can also look at someone like Arthur Jafa, whose movies are so powerful because he is really talking about today and what today means, about racism today and all these other topics that are so important.

D: You look at art everyday, and you've mentioned some artists that you've studied and love, but who would you say are your favorite artists right now?

K: Definitely Alice Neel, she has had the biggest impact on my career. But also Flora Yukhnovich—she was in my exhibition at Victoria Miro this summer—who kind of recreates Rococo works. Antonia Showering, she’s a wonderful artist. Somaya Critchlow, Toyin Ojih-Odutola, Njideka Akunyili-Crosby are some of my other favorite artists. I love male artists too, like Arthur Jafa and Kerry James Marshall, who I think are fantastic. There are lots of artists making really interesting work.

D: What are you most excited to be working on now?

K: I’m going to start a podcast! I’m recording that at the moment, which I’m so excited about. I’m asking experts to talk about female artists to get a really in depth view of who these artists were and why they matter. It’s fine having the 150-word little bios that I write everyday, but I love to take it further.

FORM continues the Discussion on Female artists and representation in Vol. XXIII.

FORM Vol. XXIII will be released on december 5, 2019 from 5:00-6:30pm at the Landing.

words by Dani Yan

And a special thanks to Katy Hessel from

The Great Women Artists

The cover image is by María Berrio, Oda a la Esperanza (Ode to Hope), 2019