Posts tagged Feminist Art

From Barbara T. Smith’s 1973 performance Feed Me

from Ewa Partum’s 1980 series Selfidentification

Tracey Emin, Twin Brain, 2009

Joan Semmel, Body & Sole, 2004

Mona Dinger, How to Pose a Model I (self-portrait), 2008

from Ewa Partum’s 1980 series Self-Identification

Leah DeVun, Everywoman, 2012

from Amber Hawk Swanson’s series Amber Doll Damaged (2011)

Amber Doll Damaged shows the aftermath of The Amber Doll Project, which began in 2007, when Swanson commissioned a sex doll, made of posable PVC and silicone, and modeled to look exactly like Swanson herself. They hit the road together, visiting theme parks and stopping by weddings and tailgating at football games.

Eventually, though, Amber began to fall apart, and she was formally laid to rest at an exhibition in 2008. But a few years later, she was dug up, so to speak, for another project. This time, Amber Doll’s torn and disfigured body was simply laid out in an empty studio to be silently scrutinized (and ultimately captured on camera) by Swanson—hypocrite artist—her double—her sister!

Ingrid Mwangi, Static Drift, 2001

“In the photographic series Static Drift, Ingrid Mwangi experiments with her own body, likening it to an open book upon which her own national and racial lineage is both written and read. Here the artist transposes the borderlines of Germany and Africa onto her stomach by way of a stencil and exposure to the sun. National titles and geographic borders are displaced from their habitual contexts, causing one to contemplate what nationalism, skin color, and ethnic identity mean when physically inscribed on a body—particularly a female body. Within the dichotomy of Mwangi’s personal biography (she was born in Nairobi and has lived in Germany for many years), the historical relationship between Germany and Africa, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and the oppressed, is also powerfully evoked.”

Birgit Jürgenssen, Gladiatorin, 1980

Evelyne Axell, The Painter (self-portrait), 1970

Axell—one of the first Belgian artists to embrace Pop Art—was born in 1935. As a toddler, she won her town’s beautiful baby contest; as an adult, she worked as an actress and filmmaker before taking up painting. Her teacher was René Magritte: a family friend, he met with Axell twice a month for a year, helping her improve her technique. 

Dorothy Iannone, I Am Whoever You Want Me To Be, 1970-71

Regina Granne, Marika and the Masters (Sandro), 1993-1995

door hanger by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, 2002

originally included in the first issue of LTTR

Barbara Kruger, No Radio, 1988