The ‘aesthetics of pedestrianism’ and the politics of belonging in contemporary women’s art

Through examining practices of contemporary women artists I focus on practices of embodiment, which inscribe the body within spatial production. Walking in the public spaces can be liberating and joyful. It can also point towards more complex issues associated with politics of belonging and female participation and inscription into the public spaces. Walking, as a spatial encounter, becomes an embodied form of experiencing and appropriating space. Women artists explore their corporeality within urban environments and transform places into spaces through purposeful walking. Their movements as pedestrians delineate a multitude of paths weaving space through their bodies. They actively observe and appropriate the city as habitable and produce and practise space through the movement of the body. The female pedestrian subjects deactivate the city as a gendered space objectifying them into an urban spectacle. I argue the aesthetics of pedestrianism facilitates female belonging through awakening locational identity.

Keynote of Panel 1: Rethinking the city walk in modern and contemporary art.

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