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Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus and Sharon Hayes have created public performances that respond to the socio-political conditions of their time and place, and extend the boundaries of the traditional public sphere to include feminist concerns. In their collaborative performance In Mourning and In Rage (1977), Lacy and Labowitz-Starus utilized the private, feminist practice of consciousness-raising to bring widespread visibility to the politics of the female body. Hayes' works In the Near Future (2007-09) and Everything Else Has Failed! Don't You Think It's Time for Love? (2007), draw attention to issues concerning counterpublics through obliquely referential personal and political narratives. These works all mobilize a performing, protesting body whose corporeality mediates the audience's political realizations, past memories and current subjecthood. / Art History

Mending is a body of artwork created in response to ancestral trauma inherited between women. This paper discusses the exhibition of work, which consists of media installation, sculpture, and photography. Mending confronts Walter Benjamin’s patriarchal argument that one must intellectually excavate deep memory. Rather, the processes used to create the body of work engage a sensorial approach, and attempt to both reconstruct embodied memory and reconcile trauma. The act of mending is an historically feminine gesture appropriate for resolving the transgenerational trauma of the female body’s experience. Additionally, the media serves as witness, and has the potential to act as an impartial observer in the process of unraveling embodied trauma, allowing for reflexive self-witness. Overall, Mending rejects the thought-centric process of excavation, instead centering sensory-based spiritual practices in contemporary art related to nature immersion, meditative ritual, and collaboration between women working to heal handed-down victimization. / Mending is a body of artwork created in response to ancestral trauma inherited between women. This paper discusses the exhibition of work, which consists of media installation, sculpture, and photography. Mending confronts Walter Benjamin’s patriarchal argument that one must intellectually excavate deep memory. Rather, the processes used to create the body of work engage a sensorial approach, and attempt to both reconstruct embodied memory and reconcile trauma. The act of mending is an historically feminine gesture appropriate for resolving the transgenerational trauma of the female body’s experience. Additionally, the media serves as witness, and has the potential to act as an impartial observer in the process of unraveling embodied trauma, allowing for reflexive self-witness. Overall, Mending rejects the thought-centric process of excavation, instead centering sensory-based spiritual practices in contemporary art related to nature immersion, meditative ritual, and collaboration between women working to heal handed-down victimization.

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.

Cette thèse porte sur un objet complexe liant danse contemporaine, genre et féminisme dans l’espace français de 1968 à 2015. La danse partage les préoccupations des militantes féministes à l’égard des problématiques d’identité, de sexualité, d’émancipation,de déconstruction du genre et des binarismes, de recherche universaliste ou de féminitude. Nous analysons comment le féminisme informe les artistes qui, quelle que soit l’époque, peinent à se dire féministes ou à penser leur art comme l’expression de leur engagement. Considérer le potentiel subversif de la danse implique une analyse de son rapport au genre et en particulier au genre féminin, doublée par celle de la place réelle et symbolique des femmes. Les idées reçues et les stéréotypes se confrontent à la réalité.L’année 1968 marque un tournant social qui concorde avec celui de la danse, y compris d’un point de vue politique. L’art chorégraphique prend son essor au moment où la seconde vague féministe arrive sur le devant de la scène. En 50 ans les rapports qu’entretiennent la danse et le féminisme sont reconfigurés, ce qui permet d’évaluer les influences réciproques et de postuler l’existence d’une danse féministe. La confrontation aux langages des chorégraphes hommes permet de comprendre les constructions genrées et leur potentiel de remise en cause du système hétéronormé et androcentré.Comment les grandes mutations politiques (mise en place des CCN, turn-over des directions, parité, etc.),féministes (apparition d’une troisième vague, etc.),esthétiques et médiatiques nourrissent-elles la danse en tant que moyen d’expression du genre et du féminisme ? La généralisation de la nudité et la queerisation de la danse soulèvent l’enjeu du passage de la transgression du genre à sa subversion. Il s’agit de comprendre comment la troisième vague féministe, plus ouverte à la dimension culturelle et intersectionnelle, permet à la danse d’être féministe. / This thesis analyses a complex question linkingcontemporary dance, gender and feminism in Francefrom 1968 to 2015. Dance shares the concerns offeminist activists regarding issues of identity, sexuality, emancipation, the deconstruction of gender andbinarisms, of universalist research and femaleness. Thisstudy examines how feminism informed artists who,whatever the era, had difficulty admitting that they werefeminists or seeing their art as an expression of theircommitment. Considering the subversive potential ofdance implies an analysis of its relationship with gender,in particular the female gender, as well as the real andsymbolic place of women. Preconceived ideas andstereotypes thus confront reality. The year 1968 markeda turning point for society and for dance, including froma political point of view. Dance came into its own at thesame time that second-wave feminism came to the fore.The reconfiguration of the relationships between danceand feminism that occurred over this 50-year periodallows one to assess reciprocal influences and topostulate the existence of a feminist dance. Comparingfemale choreographers' modes of expression with thoseof men, facilitates the understanding of genderedconstructions and their potential for challengingheteronormativity and androcentrism. How do the majorpolitical changes (establishment of the NCCs,management changes, parity, etc.), feminists(appearance of a third wave, etc.), aesthetics andmediatisation nurture dance as a means of expressionof gender and feminism? The generalisation of nudityand the queerisation of dance suggest the passage fromthe transgression of gender to its subversion. Thisthesis aims to understand how third-wave feminism,more open to cultural and intersectional dimensions,enabled dance to be feminist.

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The Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) created the Silueta Series during the 1970s and ‘80s. It consists of earth-body works in situ featuring the silhouette of the artist's body fashioned from mud, plants, rocks, gunpowder and other materials. Underlying the creation of the Silueta Series is Mendieta's belief that the elements are sentient and powerful beings. This perception is particularly strong in the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, a creolized form of the Òrìsà tradition of the Yoruba of West Africa introduced to the Americas during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While scholars have noted Mendieta's incorporation of Santeria in her art, a thorough analysis of the iconographical references to the deities have yet to be explored. This thesis aims to provide such an analysis of Mendieta's works; thus enriching the current discourse on the Silueta Series.

The canon of Western art history provides a selection of artists that have supposedly made an 'original' contribution to stylistic innovation within the visual arts. Although a process of selection cannot be avoided, this procedure has resulted in a Eurocentric and patriarchal art canon. For example, the Western art canon consists of certain white male artists who are given exclusive authority and are often referred to as the 'fathers of art'. As the status of a 'father of art' pertains to the highest level of achievement within artistic creativity, I argue that this excellence in creativity is based on a gender specific criteria. This issue refers to the patrilineage within Western art history and how this father-son model, in a general sense, excludes women artists from the canon. Further, the very few women included in the art canon are not given the equivalent status as a 'father of art'. I address this patriarchal bias through focussing on the father/daughter relationship as a way of challenging the patrilineage within Western art history’s patrilineage. Through this process of intervention, I position the daughter an assertive figure who directly confronts the fathers of Western art. Within this confrontation, I emphasise that the daughter has an assertive identity that is also beyond the father. On this premise my paper is based on the argument that the application of a father/daughter model, within a metaphorical and mythological sense, is useful in subverting the father figures within Western art history. That is, I construct myself as the metaphorical and mythological daughter of the Dada artist, Marcel Duchamp and the Fluxus artist, Joseph Beuys. As an assertive daughter, I insert myself into the patriarchal framework surrounding these two canonical figures in order to decentre and subvert their authority and phallocentric art practice. It is important to note that both Duchamp and Beuys are addressed as case studies (not as individual arguments) that illustrate the patriarchal constructs of the art canon. Within this premise, I draw upon the female artists Sherrie Levine and Jana Sterbak who directly subvert Western father figures as examples of assertive daughter identities. Within this exploration of the assertive daughter identity, I discuss feminist psychoanalysis (particularly the 'object relations' theorist Nancy Chodorow and the French feminist, Luce Irigaray) in order to offer metaphorical representations of the assertive daughter. These metaphors also assist in subverting the gender (male) specific criteria for creativity under the 'law of the father'.