THE INCORPORATION OF VIOLENCE BY WOMEN VIDEO ARTISTS

 

Teresa Veiga Furtado

Professor at the Department of Visual Arts and Design, University of Évora (UE) and researcher at Centre of Art History and Artistic Research, (CHAIA/UE), and Centre of Research in Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH/UNL), PORTUGAL, tvf@uevora.pt

 

 

 

Abstract

This paper examines the way in which women video artists embodied violence in their video pieces as a strategy of critique of the patriarchal regime. Since the 1960s several generations of women artists used different strategies of self-harm or explored the physical and mental limits of their bodies to express the anguish of those who are excluded from the patriarchal society on sexist and/or racist grounds. Considering the guiding line that covers three fields – art, gender, and feminist social movements – as well as their key thinkers and scholars in Sociology, Fine Arts and the Humanities, we have built the object of study of this essay, namely, the relationship between women's video art focused on the body, violence and gender along with feminist social movements in the period ranging from 1967 to 2007, in a Western context. The methodology used had as its primary goal to create a link between the microsociological level of expressions, body gestures and behaviours in the videos and the macrosociological level of broader, institutionalized social forces that are at the origin of inequalities, such as dimensions of gender and «race». This study concluded that at least since the 1960s there is the denunciation by women video artists of the general circumstances women live under, while enduring violence of various kinds, such as socio-cultural, psychological and sexual violence against women.

Keywords: Video art, feminist social movements, patriarchy, violence, gender, body, identity, self-determination.

 


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CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of SOCIOINT 2016- 3rd International Conference on Education, Social Sciences and Humanities, 23-25 May 2016- Istanbul, Turkey

ISBN: 978-605-64453-7-8