Food as Feminist Portraiture in Contemporary Visual Culture

Abstract

Contemporary artists Emily Eveleth and Theresa Newsome effectively subvert power structures that determine gendered roles and attributes by implicating pleasure, through food symbolism, as a trait to be newly associated with autonomous femininity. By linking pleasure to restrictive connotations of femininity, like the socially maintained correlation between women and (preparing/serving) food, artists, as Judith Butler would describe, eroticize the power that once confined female bodies. Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz writes that many of her ideas appear close to the patriarchal concepts she ultimately combats; however, by altering the meaning of restrictive patriarchal binds, she reclaims them. I will explain how Newsome and Eveleth follow suite. Ultimately, by using food as bodies in contemporary visual culture, artists reclaim the limitations and associations imposed on female bodies, for instance, through traits of femininity. Within my analysis of Eveleth’s use of pastries and Newsome’s use of fruit, I will demonstrate the criticality of using precisely that which contains female bodies in order to reclaim their agency through a post-structuralist and feminist lens.