Piercing the Silence:Art History & Sexual Violence

‘Mythological rape' is an ubiquitous theme in the history of western art, so much so that visitors to European art collections are more likely to encounter images of violence against women, than images produced by women themselves. In classical mythology gods rape mortal women with impunity, and classical history is littered with tales of women's forced sexual submission to powerful men in the service of political ideals. These stories have served as fodder for decorative paintings for elite audiences as well as instructional images intended to curb and police female behaviour.

This lecture will examine the way in which cultures of gender based violence are normalised and aestheticized in high art, art history, and wider popular culture, and ask how this tradition might contribute to a broader cultural silencing and tolerance of rape culture and domestic violence. We will look at how feminist artists from the 1970s such as Suzanne Lacey, Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Yoko Ono and Margaret Harrison to contemporary artists Laia Abril, Wilma Woolf, Jesse Mockrin and Emma Sulkowicz have subverted culture's heroic rape narrative to find a way of representing sexual violence and, aspects of female experience that have often been unspeakable. Finally we will consider the implications of an image culture saturated with depictions of female suffering and ask how things might be different if we were more familiar with images of female pleasure and joy.

We are committed to making our sessions as accessible as possible. If you are unable to pay the full amount for this class, please reach out to us via email at [email protected] and we will provide you with a discount code.