IWK-Reihe: Feministische Theorie und Gender Studies
Zeit: Mittwoch, 27. Juni 2012, 18.30 Uhr
Ort: IWK, Berggasse 17, 1090 Wien
“The girl’s room” is a metaphor grounded in the feminist theoretical and literary tradition. It is used to grasp the specific double-bind of the girl’s situation in late-modern times. On the one hand, the girl’s room offers a separate space for girls, giving freedom to explore practices that transgress the norms of girlhood. On the other hand, however, the room’s enclosed space can be a threat of invisibility, especially in relation to sexual abuse.
This lecture revolves around Swedish contemporary women artists and the ways in which they engage visually with critical discourses on sex, age and sexuality. It will show how their work reacts to the construction of sexual abuse against girls as a societal problem. Secondly, their relation to postmodern artistic strategies and their interest in reshaping traditional notions of girls and sexuality shall be discussed.
Kajsa Widegren (Göteborg) is a lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and an art critic for the newspaper Expressen GT. Her book „Another Girl’s Room: Sex, Age and Sexuality in Maria Lindberg, Anna Maria Ekstrand and Helene Billgren’s Images of Girls“ was published in Swedish in 2010. It focuses on sexualized representations of girls in contemporary Swedish art and culture.