Gender in the Gallery: Who Gets to Be Art?

I have been the subject.

Not on a gallery wall, perhaps, but in the silent gaze of strangers, in the way a figure is reduced to outline — hips, curve, expression — before it is seen as person.
The body as art.
The body as meaning.
The body as symbol.

I have also been the artist — brush in hand, colour under nail, trying to make space for something real. Something unscripted.
But even then, I feel the weight of tradition.
The rules are quiet, but everywhere.

They tell me what sells.
What is “tasteful.”
What belongs in a frame.

And often, it is not the truth.

As a woman artist, I walk into spaces that call themselves free — open, expressive, boundless — but I know their boundaries by heart.
I know what kind of bodies are invited to become art.
I know what kind of pain is permitted to be portrayed — and what is dismissed as “too much,” “too raw,” “too angry.”
I know that commissions come with an unspoken brief:
Make it beautiful. But don’t make it uncomfortable.
Make it emotional, but not disruptive.
Make it political — but only if the politics have already won.

And so I ask:
Is art still self-expression, when the structures around it demand self-containment?

I choose my subjects from the world around me — women waiting in sun, bodies navigating hostile rooms, the weariness of aging, the quiet grief of being unheard.
But when I bring them to canvas, I still feel resistance.
Not from the paint — but from the system.

A gallery may hang your work, but not always your truth.

I long for art that doesn’t ask for permission.
Art that doesn’t need to explain why this body is worthy of depiction.
I long for imagination to return — not just fantasy, but the radical act of picturing lives beyond the limits of what has been seen before.

Because yes, I have been the subject.
Yes, I am the artist.
But I am also a witness — to how often the two are made to stay apart.

And all I want is to close that gap.
To create something uninvited, unfiltered, unapproved — but undeniable.