Sitting stoically within the London King’s Cross redevelopment are 16 art benches. These art benches serve a dynamic purpose, encouraging the masses pacing through this space daily to perch and ponder, though mainly to ponder. A serious message about women in public space is delivered with a humorous touch — a balance artist Hanna Benihoud is well versed in conveying.
The exhibit is not about “the first woman who went to space,” states the London-based artist, nor “the women who changed laws.” Instead, it celebrates the woman who expertly applies a full face of makeup on the tube during rush hour. Or the woman who juggles three loads of laundry, prepares packed lunches, and schedules a doctor’s appointment — all before 9 am.
Benihoud’s new exhibit HighlightHER portrays the extraordinary ordinary things that women achieve daily that often go unnoticed, celebrating the ‘magic of the mundane’ in the public realm.
I met Benihoud as she prepared to unveil her exhibit for International Women’s Day, and that it runs until March 30th. Each bench clearly supported an alternative take on what we should be celebrating on March 8th. As an uncle of six, I know their three mums will love HighlightHER — if they can find the time to go.
“Women in public space are typically either hyper-sexualized through advertising or presented via an International Women’s Day narrative of incredible women doing incredible things, which is so cool, but sometimes I feel like it’s a lot to live up to,” says Benihoud. “So I just thought, wouldn’t it be cool if there was an exhibition of women just doing normal **** in public.” Benihoud gathered the stories through her conversations with women of all ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles, both offline and on social media.
The exhibit’s location is noteworthy, sitting within Granary Square, one of the capital’s most significant regeneration projects of recent times. Today it constitutes a genuinely desirable mixed-use area with independents, greenery, the canal flowing through, pop-up events, the University of Art London’s Central Saint Martins campus, the Queer Britain Museum—oh, and Google’s new mega office. Its past status and function as a sex worker metropolis in the 1980s that was deemed one of the most dangerous spots for women in the city has faded.
Progress has been made in that sense, and the HighlightHER exhibit crowns this shift. Though the issue of unsafe public spaces in London has not vanished, it has relocated. Benihoud believes more public spaces in London need intervention, where she can explore the intersection of architecture, art, and gender.
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Initially trained as an architect, Hanna Benihoud launched her gateway portfolio piece as an artist in 2022 with Girls of the Light, a self-activated stunt following rejection from private sector sponsors. A self-funded “guerrilla” installation in North London brought to light those darker, less desirable locations on her journey from studio to work. Other locations ensued following a community callout on Instagram. Ultimately, it was included in the Mayor of London’s research into Safety in Public Space for Women, Girls and Gender Diverse People.
Benihoud employed a novel method by attaching a projector to a wheelie bin, allowing her light displays to project a mix of semi-satirical artworks. These included images of a woman tucking into a bottle of red on a railway bridge or a drag queen puffing on a cigarette by a dimly lit pavement. The projection of a woman breastfeeding her baby underneath Tottenham Marshes Bridge is purposefully confrontational, the maternal figure paradoxically offering a degree of comfort yet blatantly questioning who gets to feel safe in that pocket of public space.
The project ran for one hour in the evening. The limited exposure worked as a source of intrigue, bringing in people for that time slot and thus inadvertently creating a shared “safety in numbers” feeling amongst the viewers present.
Though lasting just over a week, for Benihoud, the temporary nature of the art doesn’t mean there isn’t a permanent impact: “Less so it had an impact on the site per se [i.e., maintaining long-term safety], more I think it had a greater impact on people’s imagination about the site.” In this case, the impact lies with the locals and their perception of these areas, who may now see them in a different light — figuratively and literally speaking.
There is no doubt about the role of art in engendering safer spaces. Benihoud’s work questions whether a mural or muse of Big Sister is perhaps more impactful than the lens of Big Brother — for even in a city of extensive CCTV coverage, many blind spots remain. It doesn’t have to be an either-or. Whatever your stance on the need for CCTV, it is difficult to argue that a camera provokes feelings of belonging, joy, and affiliation with a place.
Benihoud’s community-led art installation ‘Breakthrough’ in a well-used and under-lit narrow laneway that connects the Purley train station to the town centre encapsulates “the desire from women to reshape a city that does not serve us.” “Whilst we slowly reshape our environment for our modern needs, I believe artwork can transform a space temporarily whilst provoking conversation about the city,” states Benihoud.
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Too Sexy for the Streets is another self-activated intervention that Benihoud launched in 2023. The installation is a trail of paste-ups that delved into experiences of sexuality and objectification in public spaces. Each output in the Too Sexy for the Streets series had its own story, the individual experience of feeling objectified or reduced in the public space city streets — a story resonating with many women.
But a topic not without bureaucratic hurdles: “I paint women in public and a lot of the time I have to get clients to sign them off… I can’t tell you how often they’re like ‘no, you can’t do that. Her skirt’s too short. It’s too provocative,’ and it never is. It’s never that wild. But the imagery of women is still so policed.”
To survive as a full-time artist, one needs to receive an income for their work — and thus, one needs sign-off. However, when that approval doesn’t come, turning it into a passion project has considerable non-monetary gain. “These passion projects are a good intersection between what I do and graffiti because they don’t ask for permission. They play such an important role in ‘who gets to do what?’” admits Benihoud. However, whether insurgent or commissioned, there’s no doubt Benihouds’ artwork creatively and thoughtfully conveys a message that elevates women in public space.
