Tag Archives: gender

The Conundrum of Feminist Art (joint post)

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Nochlin: Nochlin answers the inflammatory question “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” with an analysis of the sociocultural structures that privileged white middle-class masculinity and blocked the “Other” from excelling as an artist.

Wark: Despite its denigration of the individual, conceptual art provided an ironic inspiration for feminist artists such as Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson.

“The Artist is Present”: Abramovic boldly makes herself vulnerable in pieces like her most recent work “The Artist is Present” as she transforms her own bodily presence into art.

Taylor: Through new and different media, artists were able to rebel against the overwhelmingly male modernist culture and tackle issues such as race and gender.

Many feminist artists provide us with works which might seem cryptic to the audience when taken at face value. Why is it that those who ascribe to a movement meant to exhibit or even explain their identities present their artwork in a way that is less approachable for the viewer?

Feminist art created in the 1960s and 1970s emerged as a response to the ongoing feminist movement in America. Like many social and political movements at the time, the feminist movement ascribed to explain and support the identity of its cause, in this case women, for more progress in the nation. Although feminist artists created their works in response to the movement, the strategy that they use creates a challenge, rather than an easy way, for their audience to understand their identities. Their use of abstract, conceptual art in opposition to the male-dominated modernist movement creates a divide between their audience and their work of art. The mediums which the feminist artists use – installation, film, performance, and etc.- and the abstract way in which they apply them can prove isolating for many viewers.

Performances pieces created by the likes of Abramovic and Schneeman, which the average audience might take at face value as weird and unapproachable, can be a barrier to understanding, rather than providing a window into the experience of the “Other”. Such art can prove difficult to relate to, regardless of shared identities. If feminism truly is for everybody, as bell hooks asserts, then why provide the public with oft-cryptic, even bizarre works? Why not meet the audience halfway, so to speak, so as to bring the message to a greater number of people? Would doing so necessarily have to mean sacrificing the work?

– Tanekwah and Gabriella

Relocation of Citizenship, Identity, and the Body

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Kozol, Howard, and Creef each explore the trope of relocation in relation to citizenship, identity, and the body through the photographic representation of Japanese-Americans during and after World War II. Kozol describes the relocation of citizenship and identity through the War Relocation Authority’s (WRA) photos, which represent Japanese-American’s “Americanness” through family portraits, domestic arrangements, sports, and commercial objects. This relocation of American identity onto the bodies of the internees, or “enemy aliens,” portrays loyalty to the white Western audience while robbing the internees of their bicultural identity, thus constructing the ideology of colorblindness. These images also fail to capture the suffering and trauma that resulted from physical and identity displacement, rendering the internees’ hardships as invisible. Howard argues that incarceration enabled the relocation of identity in terms of sexuality and gender norms in internment camps by providing flat salaries to both women and men, decreasing domestic roles, and permitting sexual freedom. Creef expounds upon the relocation of the physical body to the internment camps and the Western, “non-other” identity of the internees that is portrayed in the photos of Adam, Lange, and Miyatake. She also argues that self negation and alienation of the Nisei (second generation) enables internal struggles of identity and makes their American identity visible through “signs of American citizenship, loyalty, and heroism” (Creef 18). Furthermore, the phenotypic characteristics of Japanese-Americans places them at odds with their American identity. Overall, the images discussed in the readings present contradictory and competing notions of identity by forcing American characteristics onto the bodies of the Japanese internees, while robbing them of their Japanese realities. The Japanese-Americans presented in the photos appear visible as subjects, but their identity as both Japanese and American is invisible to the audience.

“Camp Life”: Japanese American Internment & Gender Roles

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“Camp Life” highlights the effect that the Japanese American Internment had on gender roles within the Japanese American community.  Ironically, imprisonment and the implementation of gendered spaces served as the primary factors behind the empowerment of Japanese American women at that time.  For example, something as simple as gendered dining facilities had major repercussions in the lives of Japanese American women – in this case, it eliminated the patriarchal “head of household” which in turn decreased the amount of control that men had over their wives and daughters.  The amount of domestic work that women were responsible for completing not only decreased, but also became a source of income for them as women were paid WRA wages.  Collaborative work also became a part of everyday life which allowed for women to meet new people and form friendships outside of the home – a luxury that wasn’t afforded to them pre-imprisonment.  More importantly, the economic independence that Japanese Americans experienced as a result of incarceration served as a way for non conformists like homosexual, bisexual, and queer individuals to explore their sexuality.