Feminist Art

Call for Papers: Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy Fall 2012

by Summer Renault-Steele

The Subtler Approach: Eleanor Antin's Carving: A Traditional Sculpture and Second Wave Feminism

by Andrew Tripp

Submitted to History of Art and Architecture Symposium at DePaul University.

In the 1960s and 1970s, conceptual art as a framework was seen by many feminist artists as unable to properly express... more In the 1960s and 1970s, conceptual art as a framework was seen by many feminist artists as unable to properly express their ideology, due to its nature as fluid and its challenge to essentialist notions as engendered by modernism. Second wave feminism, particularly in the case of Judy Chicago, dealt in this sort of essentialism through concepts such as "sisterhood," which sought to establish femininity and its traditionally associated traits as an ideal to challenge masculinity. As such, the message of many feminist artists was confrontational, strident, and off-putting to the casual observer, who was then loath to engage with feminism as a positive ideology. In this paper, I argue that Eleanor Antin was able to avoid this precisely through her use of conceptual art, particulary though the photographic installation "Carving: A Traditional Sculpture," and also analyze what the consequences of this approach were for her standing in the art world and in the feminist canon.

" The Poetics of Exile: The Feminist Artist in Global Culture.

by Carolyn Guertin

Playing with the fragments of history Chicana Art and Feminist Narratives of Art History

by Michelle Moravec

In this essay I consider a seldom discussed installation piece, Venas de la Mujer (1976), created by Judithe... more In this essay I consider a seldom discussed installation piece, Venas de la Mujer (1976), created by Judithe Hernandez, Olga Muniz, Isabel Castro, Josephina Quezada, and Judy Baca working as the collective Las Chicanas, as an example of the ways that Chicana feminist artists enacted different ideas about history than were expressed in the linear narrative of The Dinner Party. Following the example of Clare Hemmings in Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory, which analyzes feminist discourse from the 1970s to the 1990s to reveal that various narratives of history elide certain groups while foregrounding others, I argue that feminist art works from the 1970s that address women’s history, like Venas de la Mujer, are dwarfed by The Dinner Party, which stands tropically in feminist discourse for all the others.

Tracing Women's Routes in a Transnational Scenario The video-cartographies of Ursula Biemann

by Federica Timeto

Feminist Media Studies, Volume 9, Issue 4, 2009, special issue: Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference (pp. Pages 447 – 460)

This essay analyzes the video essays of Ursula Biemann, which focus on the relations between globalized production... more This essay analyzes the video essays of Ursula Biemann, which focus on the relations between globalized production processes, the exploitation of women's bodies, and the sexualization of female labor. Showing the interrelation of the flows of transnational economies and information and communication technologies (ICTs) with the performances of gender and space, these video essays work as feminist cartographies. Deploying the video essay format, Biemann creates figurations to delineate an alternative system of navigation. Visual language and visualization technologies become a political instrument to counter women's invisibility behind the displacing and abstracting effects of technoscapes.


Keywords: Ursula Biemann; video essay; ICTs; transnational feminism; feminist cartography; visualization technologies

L'arte al femminile. Percorsi e strategie del femminismo nelle arti visive

by Federica Timeto

Studi Culturali, n. 1, giugno 2005, pp. 129-154

This paper focuses on the way different feminist approaches in the field of visual arts have contributed to a... more This paper focuses on the way different feminist approaches in the field of visual arts have contributed to a re-reading of the tradition of art history, unmasking its underlying power relations. While examining different theoretical and prac tical works from the early Seventies until today, the paper draws specifically on "critical feminism", which shows how art must be rooted in its social and historical grounds, so that sexual differences (as well as economic and racial ones) are considered as co-extensive with the production and consumption of representations. In particular, two issues, both located at the core of feminist critiques and practices of art history, are considered: i.e. textuality and visuality. They are discussed through the lenses of a reflexive, pragmatic and embodied approach in order to suggest that, from a feminist perspective stressing that every theoretical position implies some form of political strategy or agency, theorizing art and practicing it cannot be disjoined.

Per una teoria del cyberfemminismo oggi. Dall'utopia tecnoscientifica alla critica situata del cyberspazio

by Federica Timeto

Studi Culturali, n. 3, dicembre 2009, pp. 453-478

La nozione di tecnosocialità elaborata nell’ambito dei social studies of technology (STS),  e ampiamente... more La nozione di tecnosocialità elaborata nell’ambito dei social studies of technology (STS),  e ampiamente dibattuta all’interno della riflessione tecnofemminista, porta in primo piano la costruzione sociale del genere e della tecnologia, e la necessità di considerare congiuntamente le tecnologie di genere e l’ingenerarsi delle tecnologie. Questo saggio analizza l’apporto teorico e pratico del cyberfemminismo al dibattito, analizzando la fase utopica e quella critica del cyberfemminismo per soffermarsi sull’incontro fra il cyberfemminismo, il pensiero postcoloniale e il femminismo transculturale. Ritornando alla radice politica del pensiero di Donna Haraway sul cyborg e sui saperi situati, il cyberfemminismo situato e transculturale recupera la dimensione incarnata delle nuove tecnologie, e adopera e analizza le nuove tecnologie di informazione e comunicazione considerandone gli effetti materiali e simbolici in relazione alle dinamiche della produzione e del consumo, della collocazione e della mobilità, per rivendicare un agire femminista che scaturisce dai contesti e dalle storie in cui l’intreccio fra corpi e tecnologie fa differenza.

Keywords: ICTs - cyberfemminismo - Donna Haraway - studi postcoloniali - femminismo transculturale

Arte femminista e nuove tecnologie: una prospettiva situata

by Federica Timeto

In "Culture della differenza. Femminismo, visualità e studi postcoloniali", a cura di Federica Timeto, Utet, Torino, 2008, pp. 158-73.

Unmasking the Theatre of Technoscience: The cyberfeminist performances of subRosa

by Federica Timeto

Feminist Media Studies, Volume 10, Issue 2 June 2010 , pages 244-248

Framed by the work of Haraway and her work on technobiopower, Timeto approaches the subRosa group as exemplar of the... more Framed by the work of Haraway and her work on technobiopower, Timeto approaches the subRosa group as exemplar of the relationship between second wave feminist art and rethinking strategies of feminist performance/intervention through a transnational lens that incorporates technoscience. As Timeto writes, “In the participatory art of subRosa, the performances of technobiopower are
restaged and deconstructed to reveal their linkages with the performances of everyday life.”

Femminismo transculturale e pratiche di re-visione

by Federica Timeto

Introduzione a "Culture della differenza. Femminismo, visualità e studi postcoloniali", a cura di Federica Timeto, Utet, Torino, 2008, pp. IX-XX

Another Mother for Peace: Reconsidering Maternalist Peace Rhetoric from a Historical Perspective

by Michelle Moravec

Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (formerly JARM)

In framing women’s opposition to war in terms of motherhood, I fear that a role that may be individually empowering to... more In framing women’s opposition to war in terms of motherhood, I fear that a role that may be individually empowering to women is mistaken for a politically powerful protest position. In this essay I explore the consequences of maternalist peace rhetoric by tracing its use by women’s pacifist groups over the past four decades. I juxtapose a little discussed Vietnam era group, Another Mother for Peace, with two contemporary examples, Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan. Despite varying uses of the motherhood trope, the rhetoric produced by these activists is often startlingly similar. I stress the congruencies in order to highlight the ways in which they rely on extra-political activism and emotive arguments to advocate for peace. While it may be deeply meaningful for individuals to speak from a maternal voice, it does not necessarily translate into a powerful voice for women in politics. Ultimately, I conclude that while motherhood provides an emotionally resonate call for peace activists, it undercuts the political efficacy of women working to end war. Instead, following in recent analyses of the contemporary peace movement, I argue that a diffusion of identity-based differences will better serve this movement.

The Woman's Building, Chicago, 1893: The Woman's Building, Los Angeles, 1973-.

by Maria Karras

The Woman's Building & Feminist Art Education 1973-1991-Centerfold

by Maria Karras

Mother Art: Feminism, Art and Activism

by Michelle Moravec

Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering Volume 5.1 Spring/Summer 2003, 69-77.

“At Home” at the Woman’s Building (But Who Gets A Room of Her Own?): Women of Color and Community

by Michelle Moravec

How Did the Los Angeles Woman's Building Keep Feminism Alive, 1970-1991?

by Michelle Moravec

This multimedia project explores organized feminism by looking at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, California. The... more This multimedia project explores organized feminism by looking at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, California. The Woman’s Building was a physical space that during its long history consisted of businesses, activists, and artists and all bound by a common commitment to feminism. The name itself, however, became synonymous with a group of feminist artists who emerged from the central group, the Feminist Studio Workshop. While art historians have done an admirable job of exploring the aesthetic works of artists associated with the Woman's Building, it was as much a product of feminist activism in the 1970s as it was of the art world, and it must be understood within the historiography of the women's movement.

Topographies of Anti-Nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles

by Michelle Moravec

, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 6:1(Spring 2010), 58-71.

Building on Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, this essay takes the reader on a virtual... more Building on Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, this essay takes the reader on a virtual driving tour of early 80’s Los Angeles anti-nuclear protest art. L.A. is, to borrow Banham’s felicitous phrase “the uniquely mobile metropolis” best viewed from behind the wheel of the car. The fourth section of his classic riffed on the popular Disney attraction Autopia in which children play at driving. Endless circles of the track may be seen as a metaphor for the mindless, purposeless vapidity, of L.A. Yet for Banham the car became the ultimate metaphor for the freedom of the west, embodied in the sprawling architecture of Los Angeles. His influential work serendipitously appeared concomitantly with the rise of Los Angeles as a cultural capital, not just of popular entertainment, but as a city that vied with New York to be the center of the American art world.

Feminist Art Activism in Public Spaces: A Case Study of Los Angeles in the 1970s

by Michelle Moravec

Forthcoming Art and the Artist in Society

In the Name of Love: Feminist Art, the Women’s Movement and History

by Michelle Moravec

Forthcoming catalog essay, the Waitresses, for Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building, Otis College of Art

“This linking of past and future, through the mediation of an artist/ historian striving for change in the name of... more “This linking of past and future, through the mediation of an artist/ historian striving for change in the name of love is one sort of “radical limit” for history.”

The above quote comes from an article that takes the form of an exchange between video activist and critic Alexandra Juhasz and feminist historian Antoinette Burton. This piece neatly joins the strands I want to braid together in this article about The Waitresses, a feminist performance art group that explored the themes of women’s labor from 1977 to 1984. Juhasz and Burton’s conversation is at once a meditation on the function of political art, the role of history in documenting, sustaining and perhaps transforming those movements, and the influence gender has on these constructions. Both women are acutely aware of the limitations of a socially engaged history, particularly one that seeks to create change both in the writing of history, but also in society itself. In the case of Juhasz’s work on communities around AIDS, the limitation she references in the above quote is that the movement cannot forestall the inevitable death of many of its members. In this piece, I want to explore the “radical limit” that exists within the historiography of the feminist art movement, although in its case it is a moribund narrative that threatens to trap the movement.

Feminism, the Public Sphere and The Incest Awareness Project at the Woman’s Building

by Michelle Moravec

in Cultural Programming in the Public Sphere, Cambridge Scholars Press

In this essay I explore the institutional influence of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building by considering The Incest... more In this essay I explore the institutional influence of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building by considering The Incest Awareness Project (1979-1981) and explore the way the Woman’s Building functioned as a counterpublic site for launching new discourses into the public sphere.