Women in art: politics of embodiment

The idea of embodiment, and the use of the body and its 'objects': hair, nails, blood, saliva, and so forth, has a prominent place in contemporary art. From the 1960s onwards, European and American women artists’ interest in using their own bodies in their art significantly increased, calling attention to the social and political significance of representation of the body. Artistic movements such as ‘Happening’ or ‘Fluxus’ focused on conducting repetitive everyday actions, where the performers attempted to erase the division between the viewer and the maker, the everyday and the artistically produced. Artists such as Ana Mendieta used their bodies to actively inhabit and interact with the earth and its landscape. In this same period, feminist historians and theorists promoted the idea that body imagery is central in constructing identity. Both artists and theorists attacked traditional approaches that undermined the significance of human embodiment and its materiality, especially those of artistic modernism.

In this 5-session course we focus on the representation of body and body-related practices, and the surrounding concepts. Our initial focus will be on selected works by women avant-garde artists, moving to body and performance art of the 1960s and 1970s, and the feminist art movement. We will explore works in diverse media from painting, sculpture and photography to video and installation. We will finish by looking at most recent artists – dealing with the impact of technological development on our understanding of what it means to be embodied. The course is structured around lectures and class discussions exploring how material changes and the development of ideas surrounding embodiment are reflected in the examined artworks.

Warning: This course contains some visual material that is explicit and may be considered disturbing.