“Taking WACK! Personally: The Two Traceys (Emin and Moffatt) or how I used visual culture to bring 1965-80 feminism into the present”
Dr. Sneja Gunew
Professor, English and Women’s Studies, UBC
The serendipitous presence of the WACK! exhibition of feminist art 1965-80 at the Vancouver Art Gallery over the last few months presented a unique opportunity to induct upper-level undergraduate Women’s Studies students into these earlier feminist decades. Amongst the pedagogical strategies I used was to look at the personal as a liberating concept for women in that it helped articulate women’s differences as part of generating second-wave feminism. However, it has also functioned to trap women by reducing them to the personal and the domestic at the expense of their participation in the public realm. In the context of considerations of feminist pedagogy, the talk will look at the distinctive ways in which two contemporary women artists interpret the personal. British artist Tracey Emin’s work embraces the autobiographical as intertwined with the sexual, whereas Australian artist Tracey Moffatt’s emphasis on formalism keeps at bay those critics who attempt to essentialise her as an Aboriginal artist.
