Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Maria Gindhart, committee chair; Susan Richmond, Akela Reason, committee members. Electronic text (82 p. : ill. (chiefly col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 14, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82).

My thesis tilled Feminist Poetics: Symbolism in an Emblematic Journey Reflecting Self and Vision, consists of thirty oil paintings on canvas, several preparatory sketches and drawings in different media on paper, and is supported and elucidated by an exegesis. The paintings on unframed canvases reveal mise en scènes and emblems that present to the viewer a drama about links between identities, differences, relationships and vision. Images of my daughter, friends and myself fill single canvases, suites of paintings, diptyches and triptychs. The impetus behind my research derives from my recognition of the cultural means by which women's experience is excluded from a representational norm or ideal. I use time-honoured devices, such as, illusionist imagery, aspects of portraiture, complex fractured atmospheric space, paintings and drawings within paintings, mirrors and reflective surfaces, shadows and architectural devices. They structure my compositions in a way that envelops the viewer in my internal world of ideas. Some of these features function symbolically, as emblems. A small part of the imagery relies on verisimilitude, such as my hands and their shadow and my single observing eye enclosed by my glasses. What remains is a fantasy world, ‘seen’ by the image of my other eye, or ‘faction’, based on memories and texts explaining the significance of ancient Minoan symbols. In my paintings, I base the subjects of this fantasy on my memories of the Knossos Labyrinth and matristic symbols, such as the pillar, snake, blood, eye and horn. They suggest the presence of a ritual where initiates descended into the adyton (holy of holies) or sunken areas in the labyrinth. The paintings attempt a ‘rewriting’ of sacrality and gender by adopting the symbolism of death, transformation and resurrection in the adyton. The significance of my emblematic imagery is that it constructs a foundation narrative about vision and insight. I sought symbolic attributes shared by European oil painting and Minoan antiquity. Both traditions share symbolic attributes with male dying gods in Greek myths and Medusa plays a central part in this linkage. I argue that her attributes seem identical to both those of the dying gods and Minoan goddesses. In the Minoan context these symbols suggest metaphors for the female body and the mother and daughter blood line. When the symbols align with the beheaded Medusa in a patriarchal context, both her image and her attributes represent cautionary tales about female sexuality that have repercussions for aspects of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque oil painting Medusa's image served as a vehicle for an allegory that personified the triumph of reason over the senses. In the twentieth century, the vagina dentata suggests her image, a personified image of irrational emotion that some male Surrealists celebrated as a muse. She is implicated in the male gaze as a site of castration and her representation suggests a symbolic form pertaining to perspective. Medusa's image, its negative sexual and violent connotations, seemed like a keystone linking iconographic codes in European oil painting to Minoan antiquity. I fused aspects of matristic Minoan antiquity with elements of European oil paintings in the form of disguised attribute gestures, objects and architectural environments. I selected three paintings, Dürer's Setf-Portrait, 1500, Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630 and Velazquez's Las Meniruis, 1656 as models because 1 detected echoes of Minoan symbolism in the attributes of their subjects and backgrounds. My revision of Medusa's image by connecting it to Minoan antiquity established a feminist means of representation in the largely male-dominated tradition of oil painting. These paintings also suggested painting techniques that were useful to me. Through my representations of my emblematic journey I questioned the narrow focus placed on phallic symbols when I explored how their meanings may have been formed within a matricentric culture. I retained the key symbols of the patriarchal foundation narratives about vision but removed images of violence and their link to desire and replaced it with a ritual form of symbolic death. I challenged the binary oppositional defined Self as opposed to Other by constructing a complex, fluid Self that interacts with others. A multi-directional gaze between subjects, viewers and artist replaces the male gaze. Different qualities of paint, coagulation and random flow form a blood symbolism. Many layers of paint retaining some aspects of the Gaze and Glance, fuse and separate intermittently to construct and define form. The sense of motion and fluidity constructs a form of multi-faceted selves. The supporting document, the exegesis is in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the Minoan sources of my iconography and the symbolic gender specific meanings suggested by particular symbols and their changed meanings in European oil painting, I explain how I integrate Minoan symbols into European oil paintings as a form of disguised symbolism. In the second part I explain how my alternative use of symbolism and paint alludes to a feminist poetic.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate programme in Women's Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 400-444). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51669

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Women's Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-370). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR51698

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Susan Richmond, committee chair; Nancy Floyd, Maria P. Gindhart, committee members. Electronic text (127 p. : iil. (mostly col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 20, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-127).

M. Tech. Fine Arts / The research aim of the study was to investigate the way that Nandipha Mntambo and Mary Sibande have used the female form in their art to undermine harmful representations/myths of women from a third wave feminist and a post-colonial perspective, using semiotics. Semiotics can be used to establish how meaning is made and reality represented in signs. The impact of signs, codes, myths and ideology of society on the embodiment of the female was investigated using semiotics. Third wave feminism theories can be applied in the analysis of the artworks such as Butler's gender construction and Crash and Pruzinsky's viewpoint on the harmful and stereotypical assumptions about women in visual culture. The post-feminist viewpoints as discussed by Jones about women being portrayed either as housewives and mothers or as sex and consumer objects in visual media were highlighted. Post-colonial perspectives such as the dominant ideology of the colonial period fostering the creation of interrelated, socially constructed, controlling images of black womanhood were discussed. Racial and gender discrimination affected most black women in colonial times. Through the semiotic analysis of Nandipha Mntambo and Mary Sibande, as well as the author's own artwork, an examination of the ideology of patriarchy as well as the ideology of colonialism could be identified. The artists express pride in their heritage and traditions. The ideology of consumerism and the myth of beauty are subverted by the artists in their artwork. The myth of the maid can be observed in the artworks of Sibande and the author. All the artists subvert stereotypical representations of women in society.

Orientador: Luzia Margareth Rago / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T06:22:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tvardovskas_LuanaSaturnino_M.pdf: 8176144 bytes, checksum: 9014fdffc3242f435f32003452a23778 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Focalizando as poéticas visuais das artistas Márcia X., Fernanda Magalhães e Rosângela Rennó, essa pesquisa aborda as relações estabelecidas entre a produção artística contemporânea e a crítica cultural feminista. Evidencia a permanência do ¿dispositivo da sexualidade¿ na contemporaneidade, na perspectiva aberta por Foucault, ao que procura contrapor as formas da resistência feminista encontradas em instalações, performances e objetos artisticamente construídos a partir de um olhar diferenciado, que visam provocar e polemizar com as verdades instituídas, em especial em relação ao corpo feminino, à sexualidade e à subjetividade / Abstract: This research explores the interconnections between artistic production and feminist cultural criticism, focusing on Brazilian artists Marcia X., Fernanda Magalhães and Rosângela Rennó¿s works of art. It shows the continuity of ¿the dispositif of sexuality¿ in contemporary world, considered through Foucault¿s concepts, and it points at the feminist forms of resistance as they appear in installations, performances and artistic objects construed by a diferenciated regard, that aims at polemizing with natural truths as they are imposed in relation to female body, sexuality and subjectivity / Mestrado / Historia Cultural / Mestre em História

Elizabeth Waltenburg es una artista contemporánea argentina. En su muestra, despierta!, las obras en óleo sobre tela representan a mujeres, niños y animales en fondos extraños y deprimidos. Ella utilize simbolismo de animales y figuras femeninas para discutir el feminismo actual. Ella trabaja en un tiempo complicado por el feminismo, el postfeminismo, la critica de ambos, y un sistema de comunicación global. Su trabajo marca una tendencia hecho por la confusión de todos estos movimientos. Esta tesis discute su trabajo en el contexto de la historia de representaciones de mujeres, de niños y de animales para llegar a una mejor comprensión de los que hace ella. English: Elizabeth Waltenburg is a contemporary Argentine artist. In her show, “Wake Up!”, the oil on canvas works represent women, children and animals on strange and depressed backgrounds. She uses the symbolism of feminine and animal figures to comment on contemporary feminism. She works in a complex era marked by feminism, post-feminism, criticism of both schools and a system of global communication. Her work incorporates elements from all the issues above. This thesis discusses her work in the context of the history of representation of women, children, and animals in order to arrive to a better comprehension of the kind of work she does.

Orientador: Luzia Margareth Rago / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T21:58:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tvardovskas_LuanaSaturnino_D.pdf: 48560551 bytes, checksum: 319fe4c4f559ca8407db46edd5d574eb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Esta tese aborda a poética visual de artistas brasileiras e argentinas, cujas obras de arte empreendem um discurso critico a violência material e simbólica de gênero, por meio de imagens do corpo. São focalizadas, a partir de uma perspectiva feminista, as artistas contemporâneas brasileiras Ana Miguel, Rosana Paulino e Cristina Salgado, e também as argentinas Silvia Gai, Claudia Contreras e Nicola Costantino que se utiliza de transfigurações, dramatizações e manipulações sobre imagens corporais como manobras transgressivas e de resistência. O trabalho será norteado teórica e metodologicamente pelos estudos feministas e pelo "pensamento da diferença", sobretudo por Michel Foucault e Gilles Deleuze / Abstract: This research approaches the visual poetics of Brazilian and Argentinian artists whose artworks undertake a critical discourse of violence of gender (material and symbolic) through images of the body. From a feminist perspective, we focus on the Brazilian contemporary artists Ana Miguel, Rosana Paulino and Cristina Salgado and also the Argentinian Silvia Gai, Claudia Contreras and Nicola Costantino. Their work deals with transfigurations, dramatizations and manipulations on body's images as transgressive maneuvers of resistance. The methodology of this work will be guided by the Feminist studies and by the Difference theory, especially by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze / Doutorado / Historia Cultural / Doutora em História