Feminism Playing its Role

What struck me while reading Hannah Hoch's biography what that she worked for 10 years at an editorial department of the handiwork division at Ullstein where she designed fashions, sewing embroidery patterns, and wrote articles on what she called "domestic arts", and then later her photomontages were focused on the nature of female identity and how women should have the equal rights as men. She herself was the stereotypical woman of a dominating man who would comment on her sandwich making skills, until she broke loose. The "New Woman" was the idea of the early 20th century, which Hoch showed with her art pieces. She, like Holzer, were both feminists at a time of the 20th century where the world was going through enormous amounts of political, cultural and social changes, and this abstract art was their way of saying "look at us women, we are the same as you men". Her artwork was also known for combining the abstract element with the "woman's arts".
Hoch was also interested in the "primitive" cultures, and with her art work like "From the Ethnographic Museum", she asked the audience to see the tension, or the racial aspects, between the "self" and the "other". I, as an anthropologist, also like to look and think of the "other" and would like to teach to the world that the exotic others are important to be recognized as well. I believe that with artwork like that, she tried to show how egocentric the "white" man can be.

I chose this image because it looks like Hoch has given the woman many more bright characteristics than to the man, giving the viewer a sense that the woman does so much for the family, society, and even world. But I have no clue as to what is happening on the man's side. I think that's one problem I have with this Dada artwork, I sometimes don't know what I am looking at, and I don't know what I should be thinking when I see it. For me, the men that are drawn almost like cave drawings seem to me like they could stand for the male to never be able to speak his own words, or it could mean, he speaks like a primitive, ancient, prehistoric human.