The postmodern paradox in visual arts: aestheticism, politics ans contemporary materialism

Abstract

What does it mean, for a feminist, or a woman, to be a subject? And how can we, as objects that we nevertheless are, be subjects in our bodies, and not only in our words? How can we be feminists without bodies, and how can we be feminists with them? With this question in the background, I intend to focus on a particular discourse or material discussion generated by contrasting different feminist critical production of notions of the material, expressed in two publications: Materialist Feminisms (1993) and Material Feminisms (2008). I intend to show how there is a tension – a postmodern paradox - between feminist discourses about the material in the visual arts drawing attention to a particular example in the visual arts from Portugal: Ana Vieira’s artistic production from the early 1970s and analyzing this problem through Hito Steyerl’s recent written reflections on the material.