Self-Portrait on The Kitchen Towel

Abstract

Philosopher, feminist theoretician and artist Alenka Spacal paints her self-portraits on kitchen towels (2003–2005). After first being placed in exhibition, eventually the hanging of these pieces morphed into performance, dubbed Hanged Woman, during which the artist hung her self-portraits on a rope with clothespins in front of an audience. Transgressing gender, religion and race, Spacal through these self-portraits situates herself in different subjective positions. During such a journey, the artist multiplicates subjectivities, accomplishing theoretical and artistic figuration of nomadic subject, which, according to Rosi Braidotti constitutes by changing subject positions and thus overcoming dominant phallocentric rationality. In this case it occurs through artistic practice and irony. The second portion of this paper is devoted to the children’s picture book Rainbow Masquerade, also written and illustrated by Spacal, who abandons the essentialist dual normativity of sex and gender in order to represent plurality of the two categories in the fantastic world of a wood and its inhabitants.