Digital Commons Network^™

Marriages, Mistresses, And Mockery: Gender Roles And Power Dynamics In The Saint-Aubin Livre De Caricatures Tant Bonnes Que Mauvaises, Madison Short

Art and Design Theses

In a collection of nearly 400 drawings entitled Livre de caricatures tant bonne que mauvaises, Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin (1721-1786) ridiculed every aspect of French culture from King Louis XV and his court, to the poorest pockets of society. For the purposes of this thesis, I will be focusing on Saint-Aubin’s drawings of anonymous women, wives, and mistresses. Along with the depictions of women, I will examine the instances in which he draws men dressed up as women. Charles-Germain uses the image of women to highlight the follies of man. I cannot and will not argue these images are in …

Animus, Parker Grace Thornton

Art and Design Theses

Animus explores the uneasy intimacy between human bodies and nature through soft sculpture, short stories, photography, video, and a deadpan tone. An image of a frozen chicken defrosting inside of a sauna is countered by trail camera footage of hungry birds feeding on a foot that’s been life-cast in suet and birdseed; latex sheets hang like flayed skin, mimicking the texture of the trees’ surfaces on which the sheets were cast. The work posits that human attempts to command and contain nature can be compared to the shifting tectonics of a sexual relationship--in which there is play between dominance and …

Dignity, Carla Powell, Carla Powell

Art and Design Theses

Dignity is a body of work examining and celebrating the efforts of women who are in challenging circumstances to compel a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities. Using the most basic of tools, most notably the hand, women can individually change their outcome, as well as that of their families and their communities. The artwork explores these ideas and focuses on the visual processes and products that women’s hands perform and create around the world.

The Devout Griot, Emotional Keeper., Shanequa S. Gay

Art and Design Theses

The Devout Griot, Emotional Keeper evaluates place, tradition, storytelling, and the experiences of African-American women to develop imaginative dialogues and alternative strategies for self-imaging by uprooting social proscriptions and challenging political norms. Within this installation, the paintings, performance, and monumental sculptural figures create an environment of ritual and memorial, depicting amalgamated new gods and mythical figures whose lives have been impacted by systemic inequalities, resulting in counter and

re-imagined narratives that, at times, live within the duality of physical and spiritual worlds. This work also explores the historic and contemporary social concerns of hybrid cultures through the gaze of …

Living Hysterically, Jessica Caldas

Art and Design Theses

Living Hysterically is an immersive exhibition of multi-disciplinary works that explore the ordinary lived experiences of women and highlight women’s constant relationship with labor and pain. Pain can be considered a uniquely feminine issue. In Living Hysterically, each series of work presents a picture of past, present, and future tied to three generations of women. These stories provide an entry point into the personal experiences, both positive and negative, that fill the lives of women. The work illustrates the forces working in these lives that create a spectrum of violence, from the mundane to the traumatic, and the ways women …