Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2010 - Present)
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/1
The University of Houston Libraries collect and make publicly available all electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) produced in UH graduate and PhD programs through the UH institutional repository. ETDs become available after the student submits them to the UH Graduate School, the document is approved by all appropriate parties, and any embargo on the document expires.
Collection Scope
UH Libraries began publishing ETDs from several UH Colleges in 2010. As of Summer 2014, all UH Colleges that require a thesis or dissertation for graduation began submitting these documents in electronic format. Below is a list of UH Colleges that currently participate in the ETD program and their coverage dates in this repository.
UH College | Coverage Dates |
---|---|
C.T. Bauer College of Business | 2010-Present |
Cullen College of Engineering | 2012-Present |
Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management | 2015-Present |
College of Education | 2010-Present |
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences | 2012-Present |
College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics | 2012-Present |
College of Optometry | 2010-Present |
College of Pharmacy | 2010-Present |
College of Technology | 2012-Present |
K. G. McGovern College of the Arts | 2016-Present |
G. D. Hines College of Architecture & Design | 2016-Present |
Graduate College of Social Work | 2012-Present |
Additional Information
- Online access for content outside these coverage dates may be available electronically through ProQuest.
Note: As of Fall 2017, all theses and dissertations produced at UH will be submitted to ProQuest. Additionally, some UH Colleges have contributed content to ProQuest at different periods of time in the past. - For print theses and dissertations found outside these coverage dates, please consult UH Libraries’ catalog.
- Additional information on submitting ETDs can be found at the UH Graduate School.
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Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2010 - Present) by Department "Art, School of"
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Item A Narrative of Love, Politics, and National Identity in Claes Jansz. Visscher's The Small Landscapes(2013-05) Brown, David William Garrett 1976-; Nevitt, H. Rodney, Jr.; Clements, Candace; Steinhoff, Judith; Mag Uidhir, ChristyIn 1612 Claes Jansz. Visscher published in Amsterdam a suite of 26 prints that has come to be known as The Small Landscapes. These etchings were based on a pair of suites depicting the Flemish countryside originally published by Hieronymus Cock in 1559 and 1561 in Antwerp. Visscher made significant alterations to the figural elements of the images. Visscher’s figures act to guide the viewer through the suite. This would suggest a narrative structure to the suite that the contemporary viewer would have to be able to recognize and read. The 17th century Dutch consumer of prints would have been able to recognize The Small Landscapes as a narrative, told through images, that was a rich source for contemplation. Identifiable symbols of love and marriage found throughout the suite suggests that The Small landscapes is in effect a nostalgic and sad love story.Item A Paradigm Shift in African Cultural Exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History(2018-12) Boeckman, Katherine Morris; Koontz, Rex; Zalman, Sandra; Conyers, James L.As the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution echoes American identity and promotes U.S. values. In a 1999 article, From Dioramas to Dialogics: A Century of Exhibiting African at the Smithsonian, anthropology curator, Mary Jo Arnoldi stated that the 1967 Cultures of Africa exhibit in the National Museum of Natural History was outdated the day it opened. I examine how curators’ reluctance to abandon 19th century evolution theories for this 1967 exhibition, may have reflected one side of a cultural discourse over race that has been ongoing for most of the century. African hall displays that came before and after the 1967 installation are analyzed with coeval developments in African exhibitions outside the Smithsonian. Changes in American mainstream thought about race may be indicated in a paradigm shift in museum narratives, for the 1997 African Voices exhibition, as Africans are finally allowed to tell their own story.Item A Possible Ehecatl Figure from West Mexico(2018-05) Kilgore, Christopher H.; Koontz, Rex; Nevitt, H. Rodney, Jr.; Van Tuerenhout, DirkThis thesis focuses on a particularly sophisticated example of Pre-Columbian West Mexican ceramic sculpture from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston: a dancing figure with a complex zoomorphic headdress. Late Pre-Classic Colima, the figure's culture of origin, is poorly understood due to its severely compromised archaeological record. Based on a comprehensive iconographic analysis, the MFAH figure is tentatively identified as the wind deity Ehecatl, a god from the broadly shared Mesoamerican deity system that is previously unconfirmed in Preclassic Colima. While West Mexican sculpture was once considered merely illustrative of everyday activities, this thesis concludes that the MFAH Colima Dancer and similar figures evince highly evolved communal religious practices. This interpretation also supports the existence of generally unacknowledged trade between ancient West Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica, both in tangible assets and in ideological/religious concepts. This new perspective will hopefully catalyze further reappraisal of underappreciated West Mexican ceramic materials.Item Beneath the Hanging Moss: The Journey of African American Female Artist/Educators at a Historically Black College(2017-05) Gilbert, Lynnette M.; Chung, Sheng K.; Lee, Mimi Miyoung; Markello, Carrie; Ambush, Debra J.; Bryan, KishaBackground: Incorporating the histories and works of art of African Americans from a multicultural perspective could enhance understandings of American heritage and contributions in art education. African American artists have served as important artistic and historical figures; however, they have often been left out or minimalized throughout the history of art education. It is necessary to incorporate African American artists into art education to help shape students’ understanding, in a deliberate way, of African Americans on art and art education and the impactful role of historically black colleges in African Americans’ teacher training. Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to investigate the experiences of female African American artists/educators who are graduates of the same historically black college. The study explored how participants’ self-reported influences, obstacles, and experiences in art teacher education transcended into their development into art educators. This study is an important addition to art education literature in that it presents African American women perspectives on the effect of context and pedagogy on their development of style and method of teaching art. Methods: Data were collected using case study qualitative methods. The participants included five African American female artists/educators, which included the researcher. Participants were selected through purposeful sampling and then interviewed. The researcher transcribed and compared participants’ responses and established themes. Results: Data analysis showed common themes of choosing a historically black college, experiences and influences, and how these influences transcended into personal teacher practices. Participants’ narratives reflected unique experiences that prepared them in the field of art education. Conclusion: The conclusion reveals the historical relevance of historically black colleges and universities in educating African American female artists/educators. Their perspectives on how their teacher training influenced their development as art educators is important because it adds a voice that is seldom heard.Item Britain's Camp: The British Nationalist Narrative of Bergen-Belsen by Doris Zinkeisen(2012-12) Black, Rebecka 1979-; Sorkin, Jenni M.; Locheed, Jessica; Jacobs, David L.; Thomas, Tammis E.British painter Doris Zinkeisen (1889 – 1991) is largely unknown to art history. Therefore, her paintings done as a commissioned war artist (1941 – 1945) have yet to be adequately examined. The majority of these 14 works are easily understood as nationalist propaganda as they depict the relief work of British forces in Europe. However, Doris Zinkeisen also produced three paintings of the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen: Belsen: April, 1945, Human Laundry and The Burning of Belsen, which have been interpreted as harrowing works of Holocaust art. This thesis examines these three works by Zinkeisen and argues they are best understood as nationalist propaganda for Britain. This thesis seeks to expand the art historical scholarship on an unremembered, yet prolific artist. Second, it contributes research to the study of British commissioned war-time art. Finally, it reclaims nationalist propaganda too long misunderstood as Holocaust art.Item Celebratory Yet Unsettling: Studies on Early 1970s Chicano Student Murals in UCLA and UH(2021-05) Garcia, Hector R.; Tejada, Roberto J.; Koontz, Rex; Perales, MonicaThis thesis describes the documentation of two historic murals that are exceptional in their relationships to the rising of the Chicano consciousness insofar as their stories will become an integral part of the historical record. Based on the presumption that both murals compared in this study are works of art, this thesis proposes to elevate the art historical value of Chicano History (UCLA-CSRC, 1970) and The Chicano Student Mural (UH, 1973), legitimizing their condition as historical monuments of cultural heritage that must be displayed, protected and conserved. As works of art, both murals are ideal for studies in early Chicano visual expressions of resistance via form and content during the first phase of the Chicano community mural movement from 1965 to 1974. Also, each mural is a visual record of their populations and by proxy each are deposits of the rising of the Chicano consciousness at each public institution. This thesis argues that both murals function as symbolic monuments that merit conservation and proper display. The people who influenced their making reflected their own auto-determination by indicting the systems and institutions oppressing them through strategies of direct action, civil disobedience, community organizing and participation in a civic consciousness. These social movements brought about social change in the political, legal and—the focus of this thesis—the educational system. Furthermore, the material and visual form of the murals are embedded with the struggles and strategies for representation and re-signifying of public spaces at the University of California in Los Angeles, and at the University of Houston in Texas by reclaiming of the newly occupied spaces by the rising of the Chicano consciousness. Using both field and archival research, this thesis is the first historical undertaking of examining materials related to the murals to explicate the planning and making of two regionally-specific and historical murals. Documentation about the planning and making of the murals is scarce and difficult to access. Before this research project, knowledge of the making of these artworks existed only in the memories of a few whose testimonies have been recorded in oral interviews conducted by the author. Digital humanities is a possible way of democratizing this information and empowering our communities and their youth.Item Chuck Ramirez: Outsider Objects(2014-05) Gaunt, Illa; Koontz, Rex; Locheed, Jessica; Jacobs, David L.; Castillo, EricChuck Ramirez, a graphic designer for H-E-B, a Texas-based grocery store chain, spent his workdays communicating ideas through the products he promoted in glossy advertisements and posters. His professional career undoubtedly influenced his artistic endeavors, which revolved around producing images of everyday objects. He often photographed his subjects out of context, isolated against a stark white background, thereby provoking the viewer to reexamine them. What was it about coconuts, grocery bags, pillboxes, piñatas, raw meat, wilted flowers, and worn brooms that enthralled Ramirez? What ideas was he communicating through the idiosyncratic objects he chose to photograph? This thesis will illustrate how the quotidian objects Ramirez chose to examine were linked to his liminal identity. While Ramirez’s photographs on the surface appear as merely images of simple objects, in reality his works play out like self-portraits, reflecting the overlapping complexities of his identity and the struggle to come to terms with who he was. A self-proclaimed “coconut,” Ramirez was a Mexican-American who was reared like a “white kid;” a designation that made him neither Chicano, nor Mexican nor Anglo. Furthermore, he was a gay man contending with HIV and struggling with a serious heart condition. The objects in his photographs serve as stand-ins for himself and are metaphorically connected to his self-proclaimed “outsider” status. Ramirez’s objects became a medium through which he contemplated his race, upbringing, sexuality and illnesses. This thesis will examine Ramirez’s work in a broader context, considering the influence his environment and heritage had on his artistic themes and techniques, while also assaying the personal discourse embedded in his creations.Item Composing the World in Spanish Colonial Painting: The Descent of Christ into Limbo and the Pilgrimage to Paradise(2021-05) Girard, Ana P.; Koontz, Rex; Nevitt, H. Rodney, Jr.; Prosperetti, LeopoldineComposing the World in Spanish Colonial Painting explores the cross-fertilization between western images of the world and indigenous traditions of envisioning the earth through one enigmatic seventeenth century painting from the Cuzco School: The Descent of Christ into Limbo. This thesis is dedicated to understanding the re-arrangement of the figured world in Spanish Colonial painting through the fusion of indigenous (Andean) and European worldviews. I am especially interested in how indigenous artists of the Spanish colonies participated in what has been known as the “Global Baroque,” and how looking at them as native artists creating a figured world in a specific place may help us more fully understand works such as the one before us. I believe that The Descent of Christ into Limbo, calls for the study of symbolic and religious meanings embedded in it, by both Andean and European cosmologies. This painting is part of a collection of paintings largely from production centers of the Andes, such as Cuzco and Quito. But it does not quite fit the kind of paintings associated with these flourishing schools. Therefore, I have dedicated great part of my thesis to study the reasons of why this enigmatic work is so unique and different from other Spanish Colonial paintings from the same period. This in part, because church officials conveniently selected and approved images as “art” that were consistent with European taste. Yet, there is a fine line between indigenous religious concepts and the Christian ones embedded in this painting. It is my hope that this study can contribute to the understanding of how visual images and theological concepts like Limbo, served as aids to replace and/or erase ancient religious cults and behaviors, with the purpose of composing a new world in the Andes. Yet, this was a partial accomplishment since indigenous art and culture played a huge role in building what we know as Viceregal or Spanish Colonial Art.Item Decolonizing Taste: A Mesoamerican Staple In Colonial And Contemporary Art(2020-05) Scoville, Sheila Layton; Tejada, Roberto J.; Koontz, Rex; Biczel, DorotaIn this thesis, the staple food of Mesoamerica features in a pair of comparison studies each containing two representations, one from colonial Mexico and another from the contemporary Southwest US. The association of the tortilla with indigeneity in these four representations signifies a sense of belonging and continuity for some, an inferior difference for others, and, for one artist, the burden of her ethnicity. In the Codex Mendoza of the sixteenth century and the collage Citlali: Hechando Tortillas y Cortando Nopales en Outer Space by Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez, the practice of making tortillas consecrates space as home for the image makers, who confront the potential loss of their culture to the emerging or ongoing forces of colonialism. While the codex blends Amerindian and European discursive modes to present a civilized Mexica society in the eyes of their colonizers, Vasquez selectively cites Indigenous tradition to express her Xicanx feminism and concern for the health of her community. The eighteenth-century casta painting, Indios Otomies que van a la feria by Juan Rodríguez Juárez, and the 1992 performance of Indigurrito by Nao Bustamante both conflate the tortilla with indigeneity, but to opposite ends. In Indios Otomies, the tortilla is a marker of los indios, whose subjugation and assimilation as workers sustained New Spain’s imperial economy. Through live performance and the consumption of a tortilla wrap, Indigurrito activates stereotypes to expose colonial desire in institutionalized multicultural initiatives. Since the implication of the tortilla’s Mesoamerican history depends on each artist’s relationship to coloniality, this study formulates a response to the question: Can cultural practices help to decolonize, and if so, what constitutes a decolonial aesthetics? If culture constructs a way of seeing that serves colonialist desire, cultural workers can contribute to the project of decolonization. The criteria of a decolonial project include the contributors’ acknowledgement of settler status and a tangible correlation to current Indigenous movements and a recuperation of land, life, and culture.Item Desire Lines: Chicanx Artists' Engagement With Environmental Justice In The Borderlands(2023-05-15) McCombs, Sydney Ann; Tejada, Roberto J.; Koontz, Rex; Decker, ArdenThis thesis uses the artworks of five Chicanx artists or groups to connect the theories rasquachismo and domesticana to environmental justice in aesthetics and sensibility. In terms of aesthetics, this is largely seen in the accumulation and exuberant display of saved or recycled objects. In terms of sensibility, the artists engage with an Indigenous ancestry that equates human life with that of land. This project is separated into three major sections. Section one grounds the argument by examining work by Amalia Mesa-Bains, as well as exploring what constitutes rasquachismo and domesticana. Section two is focused on artworks that engage in models of Indigenous ecology in the Borderlands. The artists examined here are the collaborative Desert ArtLAB and the duo rafa esparza and Rebeca Hernandez. Section three is focused on the uplifting of human lift in the Borderlands, a space where ecological devestation reflects the treatment that many who have ties to it receive. The artists in this section include Xandra Ibarra, Delilah Montoya, and Orlando Lara. Ultimately, these are all artists who work from a Bordelands consciousness and seek to take care of the land, as well as those inhabit it, which is also central to the aims of environmental justice.Item For Tomorrow They Will Not Recognize Us: The American Reception of Soviet Leftist Art(2023-05-15) Asakura, Sophie Charlotte Kiyoe; Zalman, Sandra; Golubev, Alexey V.; Harren, NatileeIn this thesis, I take a historiographic approach to the reception of Soviet leftist art of the early 20th century in the United States. I explore the ways that Soviet movements like Suprematism and Constructivism were appropriated as a vehicle for political meaning by American institutions and the means by which those Soviet artists, artworks, and legacies were framed. The decades covered by my thesis were characterized by global warfare and high-stakes diplomacy, beginning with the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917 through the Second World War, into the Cold War and the Vietnam War. The thesis is divided into three sections roughly aligning with these time periods and each anchored by an exhibition that typifies the feelings and scholarship on the Soviet leftist art in the United States. The exhibitions I examine are Cubism and Abstract Art (1936), Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner (1948), and Primary Structures (1966).Item Gego/Gravity(2022-05-16) Smith, Anna Kathryn; Harren, Natilee; Tejada, Roberto J.; Ramirez, Mari CarmenGego/Gravity examines the structural system employed in Serie de nueve, 1969, a series of five sculptures created by the twentieth-century Venezuelan artist and architect Gego (1912-1994), through the lens of a new and essential term in the artist’s practice: gravity. The present research argues that Serie de nueve can be viewed as a model for her most notable work Reticulárea, 1969, because of its material and structural similarities to the canonical installation. Informed by gravity as an analytical lens, this thesis presents a new critical term, double pull, which describes the structural schema of simultaneous suspension and rest employed in Serie de nueve and Reticulárea. Additionally, drawing on the theories of artists Paul Klee and Robert Morris, and writings of art historians Rosalind Krauss and Hal Foster, this thesis aims to situate Gego’s practice in canonical narratives of twentieth-century sculpture.Item Glass Box(2018-05) Kubala, Jessica Taylor; Zalman, Sandra; Harren, Natilee; Koontz, RexAlthough the white cube has served as the institutional standard for exhibiting modern and contemporary artworks and continues to be utilized for its perceived neutrality, it does not serve every medium of art equally well. Through the critique of the white cube exhibition model I analyze an equally significant model which I have termed the “glass box.” By applying the glass box model to exhibitions in recent history such as Andy Warhol’s Bonwit Teller window display in 1961, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field (1965), Dan Graham’s Half Square/Half Crazy (2004) and Kusama’s Louis Vuitton store display in New York City in 2012, I investigate the various ways in which the properties of this model affect viewer experience. While the glass box is not a fixed utopian ideal of how one should experience contemporary art, its accessibility becomes more apparent in the context of everyday life.Item Goya Reclaimed: Contemporary Artists' Appropriation of Francisco de Goya's Work for a Contemporary Consumption(2019-05) Rendall, Madison Tory; Zalman, Sandra; Nevitt, H. Rodney, Jr.; Clements, CandaceFrancisco de Goya was a Spanish painter during the 18th and 19th centuries whose body of work, paired with the social commentary and his role as a critic, is still heavily influential on many contemporary artists working today who choose to appropriate his work within their own. Regarded as the Last of the Old Masters and First of the Modern Painters, Goya’s ability to make his art relatable to individuals of different backgrounds and cultures shows how influential his art has become. By examining three contemporary artists, Emily Lombardo and Jake and Dinos Chapman, these artists show the different ways in which contemporary artists approach his work in terms of appropriation. Lombardo recreated Goya’s Caprichos by incorporating 21st century American imagery creating a new dialogue. Jake and Dinos Chapman appropriate Goya’s Disasters of War in sculpture, but also purchased physical editions of the prints and drew on them directly.Item Houston Punk Fanzines And Print Culture: 1979-1989(2022-05) Camarillo, Wilma I; Tejada, Roberto J.; Harren, Natilee; Nevitt, H. Rodney, Jr.; Rubinstein, RaphaelThis thesis serves to analyze and explore the art historical importance of punk fanzines from the Houston area from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. By utilizing resources from various media, the thesis focuses on identifying connections between the punk music scene and the arts during the period. Using scholarship from varying authors regarding punk fanzines and aesthetics serve as a basis to discuss fanzines from the Houston area, such as Wild Dog, and to analyze subsequent magazines in the 1980s. Analysis of magazines such as XLR8, Hymnal, United Underground, and finally Sicko provides further evidence regarding how fanzines were used or what happenings occurred in the Houston punk scene in the period. Given the particular nature of this project, the majority of zines I analyze were digitally scanned by the University of Houston Special Collections and by J.R. Delgado, a prominent member of Houston’s punk scene. Copies of Wild Dog, PunX, and Sicko were additionally provided by Delgado in-person. The interviews included also serve as a supplementary resource to the fanzines, as they elaborate how fanzines were made, distributed, or used. The interviews also provide an intimate view into the punk scene in Houston and generate perspective as to how the art and music scenes in Houston collaborated. As such, there is an emphasis about the importance of the role that fanzines engage in to understanding the connections between art and music in Houston.Item Idols behind Altars – Revisited: Examining the Construction of the Mexican Artistic Identity through Visual Culture and Folk Art in the United States(2018-05) Minjares, Maria Luisa; Koontz, Rex; Tejada, Roberto J.; Zalman, SandraThis thesis examines the post-revolutionary creation of Mexican visual identity in the U.S. Focusing on the role of Idols Behind Altars by Anita Brenner, and her use of photography and text that attempt to frame the visual idea of Mexico for audiences of the early 20th century. Brenner places a specific emphasis on folk art as a way of understanding the prevalence of Mexican culture and identity, which I examine in three major exhibitions of the early 20th century. Brenner is seen as an intellectual of this movement, especially as critical translator of Mexican cultural ideals. She served as anthropologist, journalist, art historian, art critic, and worked as an advocate for Mexican culture and arts – especially for its representation in the United States. In constructing an understanding of the author and the inception of the book gives way for interpreting how folk art is part of the Mexican identity.Item Investigative Aesthetics between Latin America and the Middle East(2021-05) Reynolds, Lindsey Erin; Tejada, Roberto J.; Harren, Natilee; Aboul-Ela, Hosam M.This thesis proposes a definition for a category of contemporary art, titled “investigative aesthetics,” that questions the authority of historical narratives and remediates archival resources, from photographs, documentation, maps, and other forms of data visualization, to do so. Following the example of the collective research agency Forensic Architecture and their leveraging of investigative aesthetics as an exhibiting strategy to examine instances of human rights violations between Latin America and the Middle East, I expand their definition to analyze work by contemporary artists from both of these regions who utilize investigative strategies, including the consultation of archives and the mounting or remounting of archival sources, to achieve forms of cognitive justice for victims of identity-based trauma to which they can relate or intimately know through their own geographic or ideological identities. Specifically in work by Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Oscar Muñoz, Milena Bonilla, Fazal Sheikh, and Jananne al-Ani, investigative aesthetics provides a framework upon which historical narratives that pertain to their national histories and continue to permeate social relationships of power today may be annotated with their individual contributions.Item Joan Jonas and the Object of Performance(2021-05) Lobue, Chesli Nicole; Harren, Natilee; Zalman, Sandra; Koontz, RexPerformance art as a medium poses numerous difficulties to scholars and museum professions when trying to both study and preserve the works in question. The work itself is tied closely to a performer’s actions with respect to its setting and audience, which contributes to its ephemeral nature. People have worked to preserve these events, acts, and happenings through various means, including memory, photographic or filmic documentation, and physical remnants or by-products from the event; however, these pieces only provide a fragmented, disjointed image of a complex, multidimensional work. To more closely analyze problems associated with performance art, I refer to Joan Jonas and several of her pieces to serve as a case study for the overarching problems associated with performance studies discussed in the thesis. Her work will enable one to see how the physical remnant connects to the whole act of the past event. After analyzing her works and understanding how Jonas incorporated props and objects into her practice, I will address the residual prop’s potential to be displayed and serve as a reference point or remaining testimony to the artist’s original intent and action.Item Learning To Transgress: Transformándonos a través de prácticas artísticas(2022-05) Perez, Luisa Fernanda; Tejada, Roberto J.; Biczel, Dorota; Koontz, RexThis thesis addresses the state of artivism and transgressions in response to a form of extreme gender violence known as feminicidios, in a specific geographical space in México: Ciudad Juárez. The research attempts to reexamine the heritage of interventions by Monica Mayer, Celia Álvarez Muñoz, and the collective Casa Centrox16. Through this analysis, I address their individual experiences, highlighting the emphasis they place on the creation and implementation of collaborative, transgressive, and engaged practices. In order to analyze said pedagogies, I turn to bell hook’s deep engagement with the feminist movement through education in Teaching to Transgress, along with in order literature in an effort to reconcile a violent past and articulate whether justice is possible, and how. Furthermore, hooks text is also a tool through which I attempt to find my own space for the practice of transgression.Item Literal Body/Allegorical Body: Marina Abramović, Ulay, and the Intersubjective Relationship(2023-05-15) Ek, Olivia Adele; Harren, Natilee; Tejada, Roberto J.; Zalman, SandraLiteral Body/Allegorical Body: Marina Abramović, Ulay, and the Intersubjective Relationship will provide both sociohistorical context and a philosophical framework for aspects of community and alterity in the works of Marina Abramović and Ulay, situated in relation to performance studies methodologies and art historical narratives. This study examines the dominant art historical narratives around how performance art developed in the postwar period and situates previous scholarship around Abramović/Ulay within them. One understudied aspect of Abramović’s career is the context of the political climate in Yugoslavia, culminating in an aesthetic radicalization through early participatory performances. Abramović’s shift to collaborating with her partner Ulay demonstrates a rhetorical divide in how performance art can be understood more broadly, moving from immersive and specific communal experiences to a more conceptual or abstract understanding of the body as a broadly evocative visual material, with potential for allegorical meaning.
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