In search of a language textile and text in contemporary women's art

This research uses the textile/text axis concept as a conceptual tool to investigate the role of textile and text in contemporary women’s art practice and theorizing, investigating textile as a largely hitherto unacknowledged element in women’s art practice of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Textile and text share a common etymological root, from the Latin textere to weave, textus a fabric. The thesis illuminates the pathways whereby textile and text played an important role in women reclaiming a speaking voice as creators of culture and signification during a revolutionary period of renewal in women’s cultural contribution and positioning. The methodological approach used in the research consisted of a comprehensive literature review, the compilation of an inventory of relevant women artists, developing a classificatory system differentiating types of approaches, concerns and concepts underpinning women’s art practice vis a vis the textile/text axis and a series of three in-depth case studies of artists Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois and Faith Ringgold. The thesis points to the fact that contemporary women artists and theorists have rounded their art practice and aesthetic discourse in textile as prime visual metaphor and signifier, turning towards the ancient language of textile not merely to reclaim a speaking voice but to occupy a ground breaking locus of signification and representation in contemporary culture. The textile/text axis facilitated women artists in powerfully countering a culturally inscribed status of Lacanian ‘no-woman’ (a position of abjection, absence and lack in the phallocentric symbolic). Turning towards a language of aeons, textile as fertile wellspring, the thesis identifies the methodologies and strategies whereby women artists have inserted their webs of subjectivities and deepest concerns into the records and discourses of contemporary culture. Presenting an anatomy of the textile/text axis, the thesis identifies nine component elements manifesting in contemporary women’s aesthetic practice and discourse. In this cultural renaissance, the textile/text axis, the thesis suggests, served as a complex lexicon, a system of labyrinthine references and signification, a site of layered meanings and ambiguities, a body proxy and a corporeal cartography, facilitating a revolution in women’s aesthetic praxis.

Breaking the Pattern and Creating New Paths – Feminist Mizrahi Women Artists in Israel

This article addresses the work of Mizrahi women artists, i.e., Israeli-Jewish women of Asian or African ethnic origin, using the artist Vered Nissim as a case study. Nissim seeks to affirm the politics of identity and recognition, as well as feminism in order to create a paradigm shift with regards to the local regime of cultural representations in the Israeli art scene. Endeavouring to find ways of undermining the rigid imbalances between different social groups, she calls for a comprehensive reform of the status quo through artistic activism. Nissim employs a style, content, and medium that disrupts the accepted social order, using humour and irony as unique weapons with which she takes liberties with conventional moral, social, and economic values. Placing issues of race, class and gender at the centre of her work, she seeks to undermine and problematize essentialist attitudes, highlighting the political intersections of different identity categories as the critical analysis of intersectionality unfolds.

Contemporary women playwrights

A co-edited selection of extracts from plays by contemporary Irish women playwrights, with Introduction by Anna McMullan and Caroline Williams.

Women artists demonstration

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Women artists at International Women's Day March

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Women demonstrate for more women artists in galleries

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Women artists demonstrate in front of the Museum of Modern Art because there are not enough women's art shown at museums

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Women artists demonstrate in front on Museum of Modern Art

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Evangelical young women, contemporary Christianity, and an empowering self- understanding: a study into how contemporary women of faith understand themselves and God in relation to Dei, Holy Scripture and Christian mission

This thesis combines historical reflection with qualitative research to examine how Christian young women from Evangelical traditions are developing religious self- understanding in empowering ways. It seeks to establish connections between the ways in which historians and feminist theologians have responded to forces of restriction and limitation in Christian women’s past, and the strategies of self-empowerment adopted by Evangelical young women today. This study approaches Christian history and the present condition of female self-understanding through three central questions: How do young women understand themselves in relation to the imago Dei? How do young women understand themselves in relation to the Bible? How do young women understand themselves in relation to Christian mission? The first chapter addresses the ways in which young women are responding to historic denials of woman as the imago Dei and concepts of female inferiority or especial guilt by reclaiming possession of the divine image. The next section discusses how young women are relating to the Bible in empowering ways, both by adopting similar strategies to those utilised throughout Christianity’s past, and through the development of their own patterns of interpretation. Finally, this thesis draws attention to Christian mission as a space of empowerment, examining how young women develop life-enriching knowledge of God and self through involvement with mission. This thesis proposes that as young women continue to develop strategies that enable them to understand themselves and their faith in empowering ways, knowledge of their innate dignity and potential will inspire them — and those who come after them — to witness to God freely and fully in all contexts.

Andrienne Pauline Macaire (1796-1855): una artista en los márgenes

Durante el siglo XIX diversos artistas europeos emprendieron el viaje hacia diferentes puntos del continente americano. Entre ellos, mucho se dedicaron a la litografía, logrando en ciertos casos un amplio éxito comercial. Este artículo examina la trayectoria de la artista ginebrina Andrienne Pauline Macaire (1796-1855), dueña junto a su esposo de un temprano emprendimiento litográfico en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Macaire puede ser considerada la primera artista profesional de renombre activa en esa ciudad. En efecto, es posible diferenciar su trayectoria de las de otras artistas contemporáneas, de las cuales se dispone de menos información y de las que han sobrevivido menos obras. En una primera parte del texto se analiza su inscripción en la literatura artística nacional. A continuación, se describe su formación en Ginebra y se estudia su importante actividad en Buenos Aires, estableciendo conexiones con el panorama artístico local. A lo largo del artículo se presentan obras y fuentes inéditas, o insuficientemente exploradas, a fin de justipreciar su carrera artística y de brindar elementos para futuras investigaciones.