MOTHERS OF ART
MOTHERS OF ART 10 PLAYS ABOUT 10 FEMALE ARTISTS
In 2020 Bartels started Mothers of ART together with dramaturg / writer Han van Wieringen, which will be a series of ten plays about ten female artists through out history.
Eva Bartels writes, directs and acts within her theater plays.
Bartels' style is full of research, self reflection, vulnerability and activism. She uses her own identity and life questions to navigate her subjects and creates plays which feel like an open dialogue with the audience. One experiences an intimate closeness while Bartels guides them trough minefields on an expanding journey.
She transforms into characters who meets during her research fases but always starts with herself as the blanco page the character who feels the need to ask all the questions in teh world to grasp a fuller understanding of what it means to be a human or more specific What it means to be a female artist in history, now and the future.
Mothers of Art started with a play about <b>Leonora Carrington</b>, the surrealist painter, writer and sculptor who fled during the second world war from the Uk to Mexico where she became one of the biggest names in Surrealism. The second play Bartels created in South Africa in co creation with Cape Malayan director, researcher and theater maker Iman Isaacs.
This project was supported by The Dutch embassy and Fonds Podium Kunsten. With this piece titled <b>IRMA</b>, navigating from the work and life of South African painter Irma Stern, Bartels and Isaacs won the Best of Fringe 2022 in The Netherlands.
In 2023 Irma will tour in several museums in The Netherlands.
Spring 2023 Studio Bartels presented <b>ALL MEN MUST DIE</b>, the third piece in the Mothers of Art series. In this play Van Wieringen en Bartels research the manifesto of Valerie Solanas titled S.C.U.M. Manifesto in which Solanas sharply preaches for a society without males, bringing down patriarchy and ending capitalism.
The team consists of scenographer Carly Everaert, director Silke van Kamp and sound design by Meduse Magique.
The current fourth piece is a research on the life and work of Ana Mendieta, a cuban Earth Work artist who explored the relationship between humans and the earth we live from.
Bartels has been in residency in Cuba, Mexico With great thanks for funding from Het cultuurfonds and was invited by Oerol festival to work on the research in residency with an audience to reenact the performances of Mendieta.
All in all, Studio Bartels is working on a series of works that pay tribute to inclusivity, curiosity and the rich complexity of open-mindedness.
The series takes place at the intersection of visual art, performance and theater. Bartels moulds these forms together under the term embodied research performance.
