Art, Feminism, and Community

Abstract Are artists, their communities, and their works of art interconnected? How may multiple feminist perspectives be applied to the perception and articulation of artworks? Art, Feminism, and Community: Feminist Art Histories from Turkey, 1973-1998 explores how the lives and communities of artists, and the artworks they create intersect. It suggests that feminisms inform artists’ relationships and experiences, which get intertwined with their artistic practices. Through detailed readings of artworks, it covers seven major case studies from Turkey and focuses on rarely seen paintings, installations, photographs, drawings, batik, and performance art spanning twenty-five years, from 1973 to 1998. Across six chapters, it incorporates twenty artists and cultural figures in a world of complex interactions and encounters that impact the making of new art. By reconstructing transnational networks, intellectual collectives, political alliances, and ethnic communities, it reveals bonds of familial, professional, and friendly relations. It shows how artists have examined their own experiences in their works, reflecting the influences of their communities and lives, despite the fact these aspects have been persistently ignored in the history of Turkish art. The book integrates a set of theories through feminist, postcolonial, intersectional, new materialist, and posthumanist perspectives.