Masking as sexualization of sighting: Ontology and resistance

Abstract

The image of a woman in visual arts is profiled and limited by social constructs, which are shaped and represented in accordance with the needs of a male author on the one and the observer on the other side. The image of a woman is produced in such discursive frames that it deviates from essential femininity, insisting on masking and camouflage strategies, in order to satisfy the imposed norm. When it comes to artistic practices that defy strategies with a masculinized approach in the representation of a woman's body and identity, feminist studies of images recognize several forms. One is aimed at presenting what the dominant discourse excludes - articulating marginal identities, others focus on the deconstruction of the masculine­centred language and the space as a representational framework, while some are directed at mapping the space beyond hegemonic discourse to the discovery and performance of discursively unrecognizable identities. All these practices are common in that they are critically related to the construct of gender and gender differences, by providing resistance to the masked image of a woman in visual arts, and by defining new, specific, decentred subjectivities in their work. The greatest contribution to feminist strategies for the realization of idiosyncrasies was precisely the surrealistic picture, in which the decentralized subject as a paradigm encouraged their own deconstruction, by removing all those layers imposed by the canonical patriarchal culture, by changing, transforming and transgressing in the field of feminist self­representation.