Monica Sjöö was an artist, writer and radical anarcho/ecofeminist whose work was foundational to British feminism. Born in Sweden, she spent most of her life in Bristol.
Her paintings and writing were wildly controversial – God Giving Birth (1968) was censored and reported for blasphemy, her paintings were routinely banned, her co-authored Towards a Revolutionary Feminist Art (1971) was considered militant and divisive.
Sjöö used imagery in her paintings which often references birth, the female body, and nature – she sought to reclaim female divinity, advocated for the respect and care of ‘Mother Earth’ and activism rooted in the spiritual truth of environmental guardianship – although we may be wary of gendered essentialism these days, these ideas are no more than a stone’s throw from contemporary fascination with notions of entanglement, re-enchantment and the porous boundaries between human and non-human worlds. In the 1980s, with 100 Greenham women, she foreshadowed today’s #RightToRoam movement when she walked across prohibited land to celebrate on the sarcen stones at Stonehenge at the full moon's eclipse.
I’m looking forward to getting into conversation with Monica Sjöö’s legacy as I set out to write a letter in her memory on resistance and join a residency with the Monica Sjöö Curatorial Collective later this year.
Are you familiar with Sjöö’s work? What’s your take on her approach to feminism, resistance and Goddess spirituality? Would love to hear your comments below x
Her picture of God Giving Birth is exhilarating for me, instantly relatable and powerful. I can see why it caused such a controversy. Is it still shocking today I wonder. I realise, in this moment, looking at that picture, how the Christian stories of creation focus on God making the world with HIS hands. Hand and imagination. How different the stories would be if Sjoo's god birthed our creation stories...