Santa Claus is a woman, on the Navigli the provocative feminist street art work

In Milan, in Via Valenza (Porta Genova), full Navigli area, Santa Claus becomes a woman in the work of street artist Cristina Donati Meyer. The artist put up a poster yesterday depicting Santa Claus with long white hair and a female face, in a work entitled If God is a woman, let alone Santa Claus.

A “Mother Christmas,” or a “Santa Claus,” then, according to Donati Meyer. It is the provocation-claim by the artist and feminist activist that shows a woman in the guise of one of the best-known icons of the holidays, and is intended to overthrow the male cliché of a male Santa Claus, a male and patriarchal God, and a one-size-fits-all view of society, religion and traditions. The work is inspired by the belief of many ancient and primitive peoples that God was actually a Mother Goddess. Male dominance in Western patriarchal societies and in the three monotheistic religions transformed the figure and iconography of God into a man, elderly and bearded. “Today,” Donati Meyer explains, “women claim the origin of the female figure of both Mother Goddess, Mother Nature, and the mythology, written and romanticized by men, of a male figure at the apex, in the guise of supreme Lord and legends derived from patriarchal domination.”

“It’s time to get out of the univocal and macho narrative of a male God and male figures in every mythical, fabulist and mystical-religious tale handed down for centuries,” the artist says. “Showing and narrating only male figures in any saving position, of otherness, domination serves the patriarchy to coerce and convince women of a kind of inferiority and subalternity.”

Santa Claus is a woman, on the Navigli the provocative feminist street art work

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