During the second wave feminist movement, feminist artists began creating work that subverted the male gaze, and focused on the uncontained female body, sexual liberation, and the everyday bodily experiences of (primarily cis, white) women.
For example, Judy Chicago, in her piece Red Flag, 1971, was one of the first artists to depict menstrual blood. Blurring the line between ‘art’ and obscenity, she depicts the female body as it exists, and without subjugating it to a process of containment.
Mickalene Thomas’ Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires speaks to sexuality, identity, and the experience of black womanhood. The female nude figure has moved from the traditional object of desire to desiring subject.
Olivia Rozdolsky
Staff member