Reality of Female Body: Feminist Art in Public Space in Post-Yugoslav Context Cover Image

Realnost ženskog tela: feministička umetnost u javnom prostoru u postjugoslovenskom kontekstu
Reality of Female Body: Feminist Art in Public Space in Post-Yugoslav Context

Author(s): Zoe Gudović
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Gender Studies, Sociology of Culture, Sociology of Art
Published by: Centar za ženske studije & Centar za studije roda i politike, Fakultet političkih nauka, Beograd
Keywords: feminist art; performance; performative practices; public space; activism; women; violence; body

Summary/Abstract: The analysis in this work is focused on the feminist art understood as art production created by women, through a process that strengthens themselves, makes them rethink feminist practices and directly intervenes into social and political spaces of patriarchal culture. Theory and practice of the feminist art are intended to produce knowledge that problematizes the position of women in society, mechanisms of discrimination, exclusion strategies, the position of women artists, redefined thematization of female reality, while at the same time deconstructs the concepts of body, sexuality, phantasies, desire, power. The specificity of feminist performative art practices in Yugoslav and postYugoslav space is the context marked by wars, re-traditionalization and repatriarchalization, post-socialist transformation, the culture of violence and their direct implications on the position of women and the female body. This work analyses the art practices of prominent artists from the region in order to document the success of these practices in solving “private” traumas of participants of performances, which can be seen as an important contribution to a more global solution of the issue of violence against women. The focus of the analysis are four case studies problematizing violence against women and presenting their final results in public spaces. Through the analysis of works of Aprilija Lužar, Sanja Iveković, Zorica Jevremović Munitić and an art collective ACT Women, this art shows how feminist art practices contribute to the visibility of violence against women, open public spaces for this problem and for new forms of activism, resist to prevailing violent norms and change them.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 21
  • Page Range: 137-166
  • Page Count: 30
  • Language: Serbian