Empowerment of Victims of Domestic Violence
through Feminist Contemporary Art
Nelly Ishbulatova
Arts and Cultural Management, Bilgi University
CAM511: Key Concepts and Debates in Contemporary Art
Brief Content
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.
Muriel Rukeyser (Berke, 2016)
Eliminating domestic violence against women is a part of UN sustainable goals, goals 5 and 16, to be
exact: goal 5 is aimed to gender equality and goal 16 is aimed at peace, justice, and strong institutions.
(UN, n.d.).
This article aims to research the ways in which the works of contemporary feminist artists can
empower the victims of domestic violence. Feminist strategies in art are plans, ways and methods, by
the virtue of which the specific social tasks are solved (quite often these tasks are not connected with
the art tasks) - this is the aspect that unites many feminist works. (Bolotyan, 2019). This brightly
contrasts with traditional art, which was predominantly male domain and did not have social, but
rather esthetic tasks. It’s noteworthy to say that traditional art has quite many representations of
sexual abuse, which, however, were considered normal. The examples can be the works of the
painters of the 17th century, such as Bernini’s “Rape of Persephone” (Bernini, 1622), Poussin’s
“Abduction of the Sabine Women” (Poussin, 1634) and Rubens’ “Rape of the Daughters of
Leucippus”, (Rubens, 1618). The last two painting represent mass rape, but the audience praises these
paintings for being graceful and beautiful, but at the same time it forgets about it’s the violence even
in the name of the art works. (Lieberman, 2018).
Nevertheless, traditional art of those ages had its female members, too, even though they were a few.
The issue of rape, violence was reflected in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, “Susannah and her
Elders” (Gentileschi, 1610). The painting tells us an ancient story from the Old Testament in which
the Elders threatened Susannah that if she doesn’t meet their sexual demands, she’d be executed.
Susannah refused and was taken to the trial. But during the trial the lie of the Elders came up and they
were executed instead. It’s odd, but Artemisia herself became a victim of a rape a year later and had to
go through a trial, too. (Lieberman, 2018).
If we look closer at the mainstream history of art (which is also called malestream history of art
(Berger, 1972), we’ll be able to notice that male offenders are depicted as dominant and mighty Greek
or Roman Gods, while women are shown as tempting, suggestive and immodest.
The twentieth century was brightened by the fact that women started finding their voice and
confronting violence. Frida Kahlo is the vivid example of it. Her painting A Few Nips: Passionately in
Love was created after an accident that was widely covered in the newspapers and can lead us to the
artist herself again as her relationship with Diego Rivera was the cause of much heartache and pain.
The research questions will be the following:
1. What types of violence are reflected in the contemporary feminist art?
2. What is the attitude of the contemporary feminist art towards the domestic violence and
abuse?
3. What kind of reactions can victims and survivors of the domestic violence have to
contemporary feminist art?
4. What aspects and incentives of the contemporary feminist art can support and improve their
psychological well-being and empower women who became victims and survivors of the domestic
abuse?
Methodology
The research is supposed to be done by means of qualitative analysis. Qualitative analysis will include
content analysis, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, interpretive phenomenological analysis. The
theoretical framework for qualitative analysis will be feminist and gender theories.
References
1. Gentileschi, A. (1610). “Susannah and her Elders”. [Painting]. Schloss Weißenstein,
Pommersfelden
2. Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London, UK: Penguin Books.
3. Berke, N. (2016). The World Split Open: Feminism, Poetry, and Social Critique. In L.A.
Kinnahan (Eds.), A History of Twentieth-Century American Women's Poetry. (pp. 155 – 169).
Cambridge University Press.
4. Bernini, G.L. (1622). “Rape of Persephone”. [Sculpture]. Galleria Borghese, Rome.
5. Bolotyan I. (2019). About feminist art in Russia. nauka.me. no. 2
DOI: 10.18254/S241328880008079-0
6. Lieberman, J. S. (2018). Violence against women in the work of women artists. In The
Courage to Fight Violence Against Women (pp. 177-188). Routledge.
7. Poussin, N. (1634-1635). “Abduction of the Sabine Women”. [Painting]. Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
8. Rubens, P.P. (1618). “Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus”. [Painting]. Alte Pinakothek,
Munich.
9. UN. (n.d.). The 17 goals. Retrieved May 10, 2022, from https://sdgs.un.org/goals
