Investigating the parallel of performing for a camera as connected to quotidian performances in systemic and ideological frameworks, female artists have been turning to the photographic to examine, at large, the ways in which we perform. The performance of femininity and womanhood, its expectations and roles are all made subject to intervention in the works of artists such as Cindy Sherman, who presents imagery in the muddled space of the familiar and the exotic, the seemingly authentic and the obviously staged. Or perhaps Pushpamala N who forcefully inserts her body into ideological landscapes of nationhood, coloniality, and the divine feminine, to recontextualize these ideas to reflect her concerns (as seen in her Mother India series).

By studying these works, and other photographers of the kind, Parumveer’s lecture will be a guide in beginning to understand performativity as an artistic tool and theoretical framework, and how it has been historically used to intervene upon culture. Sign up for a cross-cultural study of female photographers harnessing the studio (or, in turn, the expanded studio) as a space of meaning-making and performance!