Faculty of Arts & Science

Criticism and Curatorial Practice

Talia Veneruz

Masochistic Performance Art as an Abject Response to Biopolitical Gender Identity

Feminist art has been deeply interdisciplinary since the first wave’s iteration of women's suffrage. By the 1970’s, the global effort towards gender equality prompted visceral evocations, transcending a classical plane to performance and body art. The emergence of performance art alongside second wave feminism catalyzed new understandings of abjection as a tool for biopolitical resistance. Serbian artist, Marina Abramović, epitomized this style of psycho-feminism by synthesizing psychoanalysis, postmodern anti-aesthetics of masochism and gender studies. Her practice’s ideologies are derived and supported by the critical philosophical writings of contemporary, Judith Butler, and can be traced back to Freudian thought.