III Festival Miradas de Mujeres(Third Female Gazes Festival)

The Female Gazes Festival is an initiative by Mujeres en las Artes Visuales (MAV), an inter-professional and non-profit association formed by 400 professionals in the visual arts field in Spain. Its president, Marián López-Fernández-Cao, underscores the lack of women representation in Spanish art, given that "despite women representing 60 percent of Visual Arts undergraduates, only 15 percent of women artists are represented in the programming and collections of museums and galleries." The 2014 Female Gazes Festival will be celebrated in Spain during the coming month of March with the objective of promoting their work within the entire array of professional realms that are part of the visual arts, from artistic creation to curatorship, art criticism, research and management. Under the motto The Woman Artist is Present, this year's edition is named after the title of the exhibition that the MoMA in New York dedicated to Marina Abramovic in 2010. About the title, Mónica Álvarez-Careaga, Director of the festival, had this to say: "First of all, because it is connected to a very successful and popular female artist; second of all, because solo exhibitions are almost always dedicated to male artists; and lastly, because for decades the MoMA has been the museum that has defined Western contemporary art canons." The most important novelties for this edition are the larger number of participating venues—over 300—and artists, more than one thousand. Some of the artists are: Carmen Calvo, Ouka Leele, Teresa Margolles, Rebeca Menéndez, Cristina Lucas, Almudena Armenta, Hélène Crécent, Paula Anta, Ruth Gómez, Mari Puri Herrero, Mapi Rivera, María José Gallardo and Cecilia del Val, among many others. Among the participating venues there are 140 galleries and 17 universities, along with a wide network of cultural centers and visual arts schools.