‘Would a world run by women be a better place?’: Athens museum hosts a bold female takeover

An all-female cabinet faces nuclear crisis. What do they do? Take their threatened country into confrontation, stick with their anti-war principles or give in to the Trumpian figure threatening to press the button?

These are some of the questions that audiences in the screening room of Greece’s national museum of contemporary art, EMST, are asked to contemplate by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana. Her anti-war film Two Minutes to Midnight is one of the highlights of the institution’s latest exhibition cycle What if Women Ruled the World?.

In a global first, EMST’s floors and halls were handed over in their entirety to an all-female cast of artists last month.

“The exhibition’s title is intentionally provocative,” said Katerina Gregos, the museum’s artistic director, who smiles at the prospect of visitors probing the “hypothetical question” of how different the world could be: “What we are asking visitors to do is try and take a leap of the imagination and think what it would be like if governance and decision-making were in the hands solely of women.”

In such a world, would there have been so much war and conflict, or less chest-beating, more compromise and considered discussion, she asks.

“In short, would the world be a better place? We’re not advocating for the establishment of a matriarchy. Rather, we’re inviting reflection on whether there is an alternative. Because, let’s face it, with wars raging and the senseless violence that we see – mostly generated by men almost every day – you can’t say we’re in the best of places.”

The exhibition has taken the art world by surprise in a nation where the feminist movement only began to emerge in the 1980s, three decades after Greek women won the right to vote. It wasn’t until the overhaul of family law by a socialist government in 1983 that the notion of equality in marriage was recognised and wedding dowries officially abolished.

Forty-three years after the Mediterranean country joined the EU, it remains one of the bloc’s most socially conservative members, as patriarchal in mindset as it is poor in gender equality index rankings.

For Gregos, the all-women programme is a corrective, culturally and politically. It is because female artists in Greece have been so systematically overlooked, she says, that the year-long project aims to both redress the imbalance and “radically reimagine what a museum would look like if, instead of a few token pieces, works by women artists were the majority”.

For supporters, it is long overdue; for critics, it’s wokery on steroids.

Shows about women by women are nothing new. But the works of female creatives are still noticeably fewer in art fairs – and solo shows by female artists are still rare, even in major museums. It wasn’t until 2020, nearly two centuries after its establishment, that the UK’s National Gallery held its first major exhibition of a female artist. Earlier this year, the Tasmania Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) made headlines by closing its exhibition space off to men (with some of its most famous works inside) and allowing in only women.

But in daring to tread where no other national museum has gone so far – often because of contractual obligations and a reluctance to remove well-known pieces from collections – EMST has broken new ground.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Gregos. “There’s been an incredibly diverse range of visitors of all ages and backgrounds.”

For Dr Vicki Kerr, a New Zealand artist and cultural theorist, the “boldness” is reason enough to visit Athens this summer. “For a publicly funded arts museum on what many see as the periphery of Europe, this is a brave and breathtaking move,” she said. “It’s curatorially thought-provoking.”

The exhibition has resulted in a re-hang of an entire floor of the museum’s permanent collection, with 46 artists of all ages and ethnic backgrounds represented in what, by the end of the year, will have been 18 solo exhibitions. Among them are Phyllida Barlow, the British sculptor who died last year; the acclaimed American photographer Lola Flash; the Iranian-born American artist Tala Madani; Greece’s trailblazing Leda Papaconstantinou; and Penny Siopis, a South African regarded as one of the most significant artistic voices of her generation.

Previously just 37% of artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection were women.EMST has been on a mission to break boundaries since Gregos took over three years ago with a determination to use the institution’s public role to tackle issues “that matter”.

The question behind the exhibition’s title was inspired by Yael Bartana’s famous neon work of the same name, now illuminating the north and south facades of the former brewery that is the EMST building.

It’s open to debate whether the question is answered, even if in Bartana’s Two Minutes to Midnight it’s clear what it would be: the all-female council ends up in a cemetery, symbolically dumping weapons in a grave.

For visitors and participants, what is more important is seeing artists who have been marginalised for so long take centre stage.

“We like to think that art is neutral,” said Siopis, whose multimedia work is among the centrepieces of the exhibition. “We assume it transcends gendered, racialised and sexualised cultural definitions – but it does not.”

Related: What if women ruled the world?

At 70, Siopis is typical of her generation: while her extraordinary output is feted in South Africa, she has never received the international recognition of William Kentridge and other contemporaries, flummoxing critics who have been spellbound by her body of work at EMST, her first-ever museum retrospective in Europe. Even today, she said, history painting, which is regarded as art’s highest genre, remains the preserve of the male artist, while still life, “the lowest genre”, is seen as the domain of female artists.

“Yes, things have changed – but they haven’t changed enough,” she said. “We can safely say that there are still huge prejudices against women globally, which is why there is such room for an exhibition like this that so consciously speaks to the experiences of women.”