I have yet to visit the exhibition but I find myself so drawn to its title that when I do make it to the Venice Biennale I feel inclined to make it the first stop on my still evolving itinerary. "She Persists," is what its curators, Mashael Al Rushaid and Sona Datta have called the show of some 20 international, rebellious feminist artistic voices, on going at the Palazzo Benzon, on the Grand Canal. I learned about it as I was conversing with Mithu Sen, a dear friend and one of the Indian artists who debuted a new performance piece in Venice, also intriguingly titled UnMansplaining during which, over a soundtrack she composed by stitching together excerpts of male art critics expounding on contemporary art, she elocuted nonsense speech, dressed in faux exotic clothes, playing with how she is frequently presumed by male artists and critics to be "possessed" while she performs, which sounds harmless but is in fact an insidious accusation meant to strip off any artistic agency she may claim to have.

Talking to her reminded me of how dangerous women like her have conventionally appeared to patriarchal figures, and how, in an age where the age-old recourse of witch-burning is frowned upon, the strategy of disempowering women of intellect by construing their thoughts and actions as somehow frivolous continues to hold sway. I was also reminded of the powerful two-channel video work Turbulent 1998 I saw at the most recent edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by feminist queer artist Anita Dube, by Shirin Neshat. On one wall of a room was first screened footage of a man singing a Persian sufi song to a visible audience in a concert hall. After he is finished, the video on the opposite side begins. We see a woman singing to an empty auditorium, except her mystical melody is not constructed by words that have any semantic semblance. It floats between sounds and wails, all indecipherable, all existing outside of meaning.