Chelsea Swan

Germaine Greer: It is agreed that ‘girls take more bringing up’ than boys: what that really means is that girls must be more relentlessly supervised and repressed if the desired result is to ensue. (Must be noted that she is not a feminist I align my views with entirely. I want equality not domination of men, and count I Trans women as Women)

Simone de Beauvoir: On two separate counts – on for her works of philosophy especially in the relation to the inner and outer self – The other is her work on The Second Sex and the mythology of womanhood. Our image, thoughts and speech are monitored. The female body/ mind/ life is owned by the outsider. “To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.” And also “One is not born but becomes Woman”. We are defined by the culture and society we live in. We play a version of ourselves in line with historical and cultural narratives.

Linda Nochlin: Argues that there have been no great female artists , in part, because we have had no acceptable public language wit which to express ourselves. We cannot be seen publicly as we are, it is not socially acceptable. It is not acceptable to be a fully realised woman. “The constant struggle against marginalization, objectification, fetizization, and subsequent erasure of women has forced women artists to use or deploy, amongst many strategies, their own bodies as subject matter to question, confront and negotiate issues of representation and their positioning in the white male dominated arena.”

Tracey Emin: Confessional art, the lived experience. The use of the body to question, confront and negotiate issues of self and representation. She also uses textiles, a female historical record/art/craft. It is traditional, has lineage, but in her work is mixed with explicit sexual discourse as well as violent and vulgar language.

Louise Bourgeoise: Volatile and intense, delicate, violent, lived female experience, textiles a with Emin, demanded meaning, psychoanalytical. “There has always been sexual suggestiveness in my work. Sometimes I am totally concerned with female shapers- clusters of breasts like clouds- but often I merge the imagery- phallic breasts, male and female, active and passive” “for me the sculpture is my body. My body is my sculpture”

Cindy Sherman: The created self.

Nan Golding: Moments of intimacy.

Lynn Hershmann Leeson – blurred the boundary between art and performance and identity – became an authentic woman reflecting the reality of female identity.

Dana Leslie: Feminist artists use performance art as a form of depression to expose daily discrimination due to social oppression.

Moira Roth: performance art, which incorporates multiple forms of expression, is particularly suitable form in which to explore their (womens) representations. Used for reasssments of themselves.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles: confronted the system of oppression by framing her household chores as artworks and performing them, making the invisible, inner womens worlds, visible.

Pipilotti Rist: female conditions, madness, hysteria, folklore, voyeuristic, pleasure

Helen Chadwick: sexual desire, female forms

Ghada Amer: textiles, traditionally female, sexuallity

Alice Neel: Bodies. self, representations

Frances Goodman: “interested in the relations between femininity, costuming, and role-playing”.

Sue Williams: In the 1990’s women were criticized for making art to narrowly focused on themselves as subject matter but autobiography is crucial to a sense of self-identity. It is also therapeutic as a process. These works were seen as narcissistic in a way mens work was not.

Juno Calypso: Performed femininity, symbols of femininity. Glamorous, retro. Bimbofication. Absurdism.

Aloise Corbaz: Fantasy, mental health, covering the pain in play and colour, world building, alter egos.