Women Worldwide by Ria Vanden Eynde

I got a fabulous postcard in the mail the

 other day from one of my favourite artists .

 www~women worldwide
I asked Ria about the series and what inspired her to start working on it. 

What inspired me was seeing how women are portrayed on TV, in newspapers, in music clips (sex sells), in movies (how woman actresses have less lines in their roles, how disproportionate nudity is, more female than male, in magazines, in politics (thinking of equal pay day), in the media, in beauty ads.... The sexism that (still) exists, the way women are still  objectified, stereotyped, reduced to their bodies.... 

While in anthropology, and research it has been shown that by supporting women, you support whole communities. The spark was a newspaper photo of a woman running from a bombing in Aleppo, Syria, holding her two children, their feet not touching the ground, the way mom would carry me sometimes when I was dawdling. I fantasized on where they would go to, she had a blanket over her arm, did they find shelter, food, would they still be alive?  Very raw thought. The contrast couldn't be bigger, there was a lipstick ad running on TV while I leafed through the newspaper. I thought in some places, REAL WOMEN are actually just trying to physically survive, and work at bring up their children, keeping them safe. I thought of sex trafficking, women revolutionaries, stoning, femicide, maternal mortality rates and recently the kidnapping of the Nigerian girls, .... and these are the themes, contexts I will be addressing in the painting series, there's so much work.

Ria Vanden Eynde Portfolio Website

The image for the painting on the postcard is based on a photograph by Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem and was used with permission.