casa de mulheres - women house

Founded in 2024 by Brazilian visual artist Neyde Lantyer (based in the Netherlands) and Uruguayan architect, scholar and curator Alejandra Muñoz ((based in Brazil), the project challenges the persistent marginalisation of women’s artistic contributions within the global art system while amplifies voices historically pushed to the periphery of dominant narratives. Grounded in an intersectional framework, it affirms women’s creative, intellectual, and political centrality in contemporary artistic production, while imagining alternative futures for women and diversity groups within the arts.

The inaugural exhibition, Casa de Mulheres 2024, was held at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia alongside the seminar Female Protagonisms in Arts, Architecture & Design, organised in partnership with the Federal University of Bahia through the School of Fine Arts (EBA/UFBA), the Faculty of Architecture (FAUFBA), and the Pro-Rectorate of Extension (PROEXT/UFBA). Bringing together 51 women artists and 29 women scholars, the initiative fostered a dynamic exchange between artistic practice, academic research, and community engagement, marking an important step in establishing the project as a collaborative, transnational platform.

Women House pays tribute to Womanhouse, the groundbreaking feminist exhibition that redefined the relationship between art, space, and lived experience. Conceived 52 years ago in Los Angeles by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, the project emerged within the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts, a pioneering initiative that helped shape the foundations of feminist art education.

the enduring power of feminist art

IIn 2025, the project expanded its reach to the Netherlands, with Women House Amsterdam, held at vibrant art hub NDSM Fuse. Featuring 25 international artists, the exhibition deepened the project’s intersectional framework and the complex entanglements of gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and migration within contemporary artistic production. This second edition offered a critical reflection on the role of feminist art in the twenty-first century while illuminating new dimensions of women’s creative and political imaginaries.

Feminist art has historically functioned both as a transformative force and as a critical methodology within contemporary artistic practice, challenging the patriarchal frameworks that govern visibility, authorship, and value in the art world. Emerging from the political struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, it reclaimed women’s bodies, voices, and lived experiences as sites of knowledge and agency, while simultaneously mobilising feminist strategies to disrupt dominant narratives and foreground alternative modes of representation.

Women House / Casa de Mulheres positions feminist art as an ongoing, collective, and intersectional practice by centring women’s artistic practices across diverse geographies and cultural contexts. The initiative expands feminist discourse, engaging critically with questions of gender, race, class, sexuality, age, and migration while affirming feminist art as a historical movement, and as a living, transnational platform through which new creative, political, and social futures can be imagined.

Across its editions, the WomenHouse / Casa de MulheresProject has advanced intersectional feminist discourse in the arts, confronting the structural inequities that shape institutional recognition, curatorial representation, and the art market, while foregrounding the resilience, creativity, and collective agency of women artists across generations and geographies. Committed to reimagining the future through dialogue and community building, the initiative creates opportunities for underrepresented female voices while honouring the legacy of feminist art. By integrating Indigenous, decolonial, ecofeminist, and anti-systemic perspectives, the project integrates social justice and contributes to the envisioning of more inclusive and equitable artistic futures.