Swap Meet: T-shirts

Steve Cisler sends us this:

"One of the people who took part in the TML in New York City is Howard Besser who has the largest online collection of t-shirts (he got his grad students to do a lot of the cataloging and photo work). Many of them are political. One of my favorites is this one of General Noriega on a milk carton "Have you seen me?" (alluding to the fact that he was missing for weeks after the U.S. invaded Panama and that missing children were featured on milk cartons here in the US). No such versions so far for ObL or SH, also missing..."

Besser's Archive

Thanks Steve its an excellent site

Carla,

Great to see the stickers on the site. Post more! One of the interesting things about that sticker project was that there was no singular image representing the vagina. In the end you made a kind of portrait of gestures circumscribing the form.

We are also considering bringing our Geuzennaam* T-shirts to the Swap Meet so your stickers will have some company in relation to the topic of female representation.

*Geuzennaam: a Dutch term for a negative or derogatory name appropriated and reclaimed as a positive label of empowerment.

1/250 negative names to call a woman (and the inventory is still growing)

*one more time in Dutch... Geuzennaam: zelfgekozen erenaam die oorspronkelijk als scheld- of spotnaam werd gebruikt.

for more info see Easy Iron on Geuzennaam on our DIY Page

Searching for two images to post in the Body-as-billboard-section, one recent (very pregnant Femke Halsema* in white T-shirt reading: Baas in Eigen Buik) and one from the 60's (very pregnant Dolle Mina lifting up her shirt to reveal the same text written on her belly) I found none of the above, but did come across this recent work by Willem Velthoven:

"I had an Abortion is an installation consisting of vests on wire coat-hangers which bear the text I had an abortion in all European languages. They symbolise the abundance of abortions and the shame connected with abortion, legal or illegal. In addition to these undergarments, in the autumn a line of cheerful T-shirts will be brought out, which openly present the same text. The wire coat-hanger (not the knitting needle), is the most frequently used - and very dangerous - instrument for the inducement of an improvised abortion."

I wondered how this kind of work functions in relation to "empowering women to make conscious, well informed decisions about family planning", which is the mission of Women on Waves, initiators of the show. Or is all fair in love and war?

*leader of the Dutch Green Party, using the pro-abortion classic "Baas in Eigen Buik" (master of our own belly) protesting the fact that the Dutch government is planning to cut birthcontrol pills from general health insurance.

I will also take the t-shirts I have made together with my feminist group of artistic intervention: ZOiNA. These t-shirts present different ways of depicting women and the female body by reworking, altering and questioning images from fashion magazines, the result is then printed on the t-shirts by using the technique of stencil graffiti.