Julie Ha
Choate Rosemary Hall
Abstract
This paper examines the evolution of feminist art and visual protest from the 1960s through the 1980s, with an emphasis on how female artists utilized a variety of media to challenge systemic oppression. Working across performance, video, and textile, artists like Martha Rosler, Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, and the Guerrilla Girls transformed their own bodies and domestic materials into instruments of resistance. What had long been treated as passive—the female form, the quilt, the kitchen—became confrontational. This paper traces that transformation, arguing that these women did not simply enter the art world. The artists examined in this study rebuilt the contemporary art world, forcing a reckoning with reproductive rights, racial justice, and bodily autonomy that the canon could no longer ignore.
