Women Who Changed the World: Claude Cahun

Welcome to the third installment of our March mini-series on women who changed the world with their creativity. This week, we'd like you to meet one of our favourite artists, Claude Cahun. 

“My opinion on homosexuality and homosexuals is exactly the same as my opinion on heterosexuality and on heterosexuals: everything depends on the individuals and on the circumstances. I uphold people’s rights to behave as they wish.” 

Revealing whichever persona she felt like exploring, Claude Cahun’s self-portrait photographs challenged gender norms in early twentieth century Europe. In one image, she appears bald-headed, steely-eyed and suited. In another, she contorts limbs and tumbles from a cabinet full of homewares like a doll.

Relocating to the Channel Islands just before the second world war, Cahun instigated a resistance movement against the Nazi invasion, working alongside her lifelong partner Marcel Moore. As the pair repeatedly placed anti-fascist leaflets in coat pockets and on table tops, the occupying soldiers became convinced that a secret resistance group was operating on the island. Eventually they were sentenced to death for their characteristically subversive, artistic and defiant act.

Though the order was never carried out, their art was destroyed. Today they share a plot at St Brelade’s church in Jersey—entwined beneath the ground upon which they raised hell.

More information about Claude's extraordinary life can be found in Claude Cahun: Disavowals by Claude Cahun. Our extended selection of female muses to learn about and love features in Issue 29, alongside Cristina BanBan's beautiful illustrations. Inside, we also pluck pennies from pavements, watch caterpillars burst from cocoons, and talk personal turning points. Get your hands on a copy here!

Illustration: Cristina BanBan

Women Who Changed the World: Jennie Lee

Every Wednesday throughout March, we'll be introducing you to women who changed the world with their creativity. Our second instalment of the mini-series shines a spotlight on Jennie Lee. 

“As soon as I had an independent roof over my head, I was ready for battle.”

When the 24-year-old Jennie Lee became a member of parliament in 1929 she wasn’t even old enough to vote for herself. After growing up in a mining community so close-knit that her house literally had no back door, she went on to have one of the most colourful and inspiring political lives of the twentieth century.

A fearless, uncompromising socialist, her accomplishments included becoming the first minister for the arts and founding Britain’s last great social project, the Open University. Her 1965 governmental arts white paper—still the only arts paper ever written—argued for the arts to be a crucial part of everyday life, available to everyone. Under her stewardship the creation of new galleries, museums, music venues, theatres and other institutions fostered an unprecedented creative environment that continues to benefit the entire country.

Until the end of her life, Jennie was unable to attend the theatre without receiving a round of applause.

You can read more about her in Jennie Lee: A Life by Patricia Hollis, and find more of Cristina BanBan's beautiful illustrations of women who changed the world in Issue 29. Inside, we also pluck pennies from pavements, watch caterpillars burst from cocoons, and talk personal turning points. Get your hands on a copy here!

Illustration: Cristina BanBan

Women Who Changed the World: Audre Lorde

The twenty-ninth edition of Oh Comely celebrates change in all forms. Every Wednesday for the next four weeks, we'll be showcasing women who changed the world with their creativity, starting with Audre Lorde.

“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

Audre identified as a “black feminist lesbian mother poet” not only because she happened to be all of those things, but because girls born to Caribbean migrants in 1930s Harlem weren’t encouraged to carve out identities all their own.

Entering the world partially blind and with initial learning difficulties, Audre penned her own unapologetic stanzas from around the age of twelve and went on to publish sixteen revelatory works on the nature of identity, whether enforced or chosen. Living her truth in a society fearful of difference, she established herself as a champion of the civil rights and women’s movements, laying bare the interlocking nature of oppression. Towards the end of her fourteen-year battle with cancer, she took the name Gamba Adisa in an African naming ceremony. It translates as, “warrior: she who makes her meaning known.”

You can find more of Cristina BanBan's beautiful illustrations of women who changed the world in Issue 29. Inside, we also pluck pennies from pavements, watch caterpillars burst from cocoons, and talk personal turning points. Get your hands on a copy here! More information about Audre's life and legacy can be found in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. 

Illustration: Cristina BanBan