A Rose Is A Rose Is A…

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH 2021

Guilia Ballarin, Amy Bloomfield, Bella Bosi, Vaiva Botyriute, Joseph Crawley, Ciara Davies, Alba De la Cruz Soto, James Denton-Pett, Victor Dobritan, Atilla Gluck, Tristan Jones, Bea Lauckner, Bekah Mayes, Christorpher Powe, Douglas Reeves, Nigel Rodrigues, Cheryl Scott, Denitsa Stoyanova, Kristian Stoynev

Curated by Ania Dabrowska

Gender is arguably the most fundamental, pervasive and customary way in which we categorize human beings. Within Western cultures, it has long-lastingly relied on a fixed definition that are losing relevance in our age. Cultural adaptions of the idiom ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’, originally from the prose of Gertrude Stein, have permeated and diffused, lasting through time and are often deciphered as ’things are what they are’. 

Today, Gender discourse and categorisation within identity is in a progressive and developmental stage. It has to some degree, transgressed into a universal, celebration of non-normative and entirely individualistic forms, with still, a long way to go in the aim of global acceptance. The collective intent of the exhibition’s title 'A Rose Is A Rose Is A...’ with its open-ended nature, allows the spectator to unravel and interpret Gender, through their own personal lens, in relation to the featured imagery. 

Nonetheless, ‘A Rose is A Rose is A…’ as an exhibition, is an ode to Women’s History Month. Each artist explores ideas surrounding Womanhood within their respective mediums. Here, second-year students of BA Photography at The School of Art, London Met showcase their work to present, reminisce, subvert, magnify, introduce and reimagine Gender with variant thematic perspectives and trajectories. 

These themes thread through the sentiment of Stein’s tautologically fused ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’ in its poetic multiplicity. However, the exhibited artists assume deeper, personal resonance to Gender and relevance, in considering the identity of Women within our present day. Each creative feat fills in those blanks, for here, A Rose is anything but a Rose.

Bella Bosi and Bea Lauckner,
Curatorial Team