Women Among Monuments

A lyrical meditation on the enduring obstacles women artists and writers face in a world still unaccustomed to recognizing female genius.

Voted the “Next Picasso” in her rural high school’s yearbook, South-African Canadian author Kasia Van Schaik considers what it means for a young woman to take up a mantle usually reserved for white heterosexual male genius. Drawing on a diverse web of literary and cultural sources and artistic icons, from Michelangelo to Ana Mendieta, Gauguin to Gertrude Stein, and Alice Walker to Alice Munro, Women Among Monuments asks what, beyond a room of one’s own, are the necessary conditions for female genius? Where does the inner flint of artistic permission come from? What is the oxygen that keeps it burning?

Through her lyrical biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Kasia Van Schaik blazes a path for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.