Despite women earning 70% of bachelor of fine arts degrees and 65-75% of master of fine arts degrees in the United States, only 46% of working artists are women. Women artists are also only earning 74 cents for every dollar made by male artists. 96% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists (NMWA). These statistics are alarming, especially to an emerging woman artist, and make clear the major inequities women artists face. Nicole Daskas: A Retrospective (2021) is a direct response to this inequity. 

Nicole Daskas (b. 1999) has produced compelling feminist performance and video works throughout her time at Chapman University. Themes such as violence against women, gender power structures, and equity for women artists carry through her practice. The artist created her first performance work in 2018 in response to the Kavanaugh hearings, a horrifying display of the ways patriarchal culture insists on victim blaming in cases of sexual assault. Daskas’s work has evolved since then, becoming more active but keeping with themes of asserting one’s own body and taking up space. 

Daskas utilizes red blood like liquid in her work as a direct signifier for violence against women as well as a rejection of standards of femininity. In Don’t Tell Me To Smile (2019), Daskas spills red liquid from her mouth as she smiles, a snarky response to catcalling. Look Over Your Shoulder (2019) is a performance work in which the artist uses a knitted spider web form to physically trap herself in a corner. She then drinks and spits red dye all over the web as audio of her voice plays throughout the gallery. Daskas can be heard listing ways women protect themselves in their everyday lives. This list is compiled from women identified friends and followers on social media, highlighting the ways women are forced to protect themselves in a patriarchal society that aims to instill fear and assert control over women’s bodies. Spit (2020) is a video work in which the artist breaks the fourth wall, manipulating her facial features using plexiglass and then spitting red dye and honey all over the glass. As the artist drags her face through the spit, she denies viewers pleasure in looking at the female body. 

Daskas' work also aims to question the arbitrary, patriarchal structure of the art world. Under the Greenbergian model, one “genius” creates an original work of art. The “genius” is white, straight, and male, leaving little space for women, BIPOC, and queer artists. Daskas contends with this notion, asserting that this elitist, exclusive structure of the art world has resulted in an incomplete art history. Daskas parodies interviews of celebrated, hypermasculine artists in order to point out this blatant sexism and inequity. The artist also engages in research projects as part of her practice. The Leaky Female Body, created with mentor Micol Hebron, is one such project. Daskas seeks out feminist performance works involving body fluids, and then writes about and archives these works on her website. 

The artist has been largely inspired by the work of feminist artists who came before her and paved the way for Daskas’s work. Women artists have been making incredibly powerful feminist works for decades and made immeasurable contributions to feminist history. Much of their work has been left out of the traditional Western art historical canon. These artists include: Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono, The Guerrilla Girls, Suzanne Lacy, Shigeko Kubota, Micol Hebron, Cindy Rehm, and Hannah Wilke.