1 the Embodied Artefact: a Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites Of

The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice

Author Rochester, Emma Christina Lucia

Published 2017

Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate)

School Queensland College of Art.

DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/166

Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367914

Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice

Emma Christina Lucia Rochester BA (Hons) BFA (Hons)

Queensland College of Art Arts, Education and Law Griffith University

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2017 1

2 Abstract

This doctoral project, “The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice”, moves beyond normative understandings of pilgrimage, God, and artistic scholarly research. Using a contemporary art lens, I travelled in a long durational performance to a multitude of international pilgrimage sites where God-as-Woman is, or has previously been, revered and respected. By moving towards and experiencing not just one destination but many, I have challenged the traditional paradigm of pilgrimage. In doing so, I have undergone a meta-experience whereby visitations to these psycho-spiritual terrains came together as a composite of embodied experiences. This blurring of boundaries seeks to go beyond the particularities of one newly revised gendered site of reverence to consider a process of pilgrimage that moves into and becomes nomadism, thereby developing significant new understandings across the fields of contemporary art practice and pilgrimage studies.

Using my body as a core focus in which embodied practice is not just academic but holistic, I ventured forth on a journey of discovery and affirmation that spanned over three years and numerous countries. During this journey, my woman’s body became the connecting point between pilgrimage sites and artist residencies in a dynamic act of physical and visual activism. I generated art works en route and in retrospect, translating my cognitive felt experience of gendered sacred landscapes and the aesthetic architectural and sculptural elements within them into tangible participatory artefacts. I combined feminist scholarship with experiences of visits to the sites themselves through the lens of the artist thereby generating a viable strategy for the advancement of imagery pertaining to God-as-Woman as an empowering motif.

Specifically, my body became a nexus through which explorations of imagination, memory, and sensorial understandings of each specific gendered landscape and the meta-experience as a whole were filtered and structured into multilayered

3 works. Each artefact created is composed of fibre forms, drawings, textile design, sculpture, video art, and performance artefacts, so that my context-based practice for this PhD project also transcends disciplines.

“The Embodied Artefact” draws on the work of women investigating feminist spiritual concepts, such as artists Mary Beth Edelson, Annette Messager, and Rebecca Horn, as well as the research of theorists such as Carol P. Christ, China Galland, and Rosi Braidotti. The project is conceived as a contemporary blending of performance and artefact, referencing the past in order to renew God-as-She and prevent it from once more dissolving into abstract male-orientated religious dogmas.

By searching through artefacts and texts for specific sites and forms of God-as- Woman, I pay tribute to both the women of the past and the women who continue to uphold non-normative religious scholarship today. Mediating scholarship, intellectual resources, and personal embodiment, I make my experiences available in the form of cultural artefacts. Thus, the research and artwork completed for “The Embodied Artefact” helps to highlight the sacrality of the sites visited, and the centering of women in spiritual contexts, in both imagination and in the flesh.

As a consequence of the research process, this exegesis and the associated exhibitions provide significant additional reflective data on the relationship between affirmative ethics and action, landscape, place and feminisms in regards to a feminist thealogical future.

5 Statement of Originality

This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.

______Emma Christina Lucia Rochester

6 7 Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgement of Assistance 19 Chapter 1 Introduction–Crossing the Threshold into Thealogical 22 Terrains Chapter 2 Embodiment–A Haptic Methodology 41 Chapter 3 Pilgrimage–A Choreography of Mobile Resistance and a 79 Source of Sustenance Chapter 4 Affirmative Ethics–Flourishing as a Means of Negating 107 Theological Meta-Narratives Chapter 5 In Her Hands–Negotiating Artistic Production as Activist 151 Intervention. Chapter 6 Conclusion–Memorial, Spiritual Recreation and Personal 220 Iconography as Active Remembrance Bibliography 242

9 List of Illustrations

Figure 1 Mary Beth Edelson, Grapceva Neolithic Cave Series: See For 23 Yourself 1977, Artwork on photograph using oil paint, ink, and china marker, documentation ritual performance on the island of Hvar, Former Yugoslavia, 50.8 x 50.8cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure 2 Johanna Constantine Bianca Casady Kembra Pfahler, Antony 23 Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Future Feminism Video 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York. Figure 3 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony 24 Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Gallery View of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York. Figure 4 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony 24 Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Gallery View of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York. Figure 5 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony 25 Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Future Feminists’ XI: The Subjugation of Women and the Earth is One and the Same 2014, rose quartz and engraving, 127 x 127 x 190.5cm. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York. Figure 6 Audrey Flack, American Athena 1989, patinated bronze with 48 gilded ornament, 95.88 cm high. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure 7 Audrey Flack, Egyptian Rocket Goddess 1990, patinated bronze. 48 106.68cm high. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure 8 Nancy Spero, Notes In Time On Woman 1979, handprinting, 51 gouache, typewriting, collage on paper, 1 of 24 panels, 51 x 6398cm. Image courtesy The Estate of Nancy Spero. Figure 9 Nancy Spero, The First Language 1981 (Panel 8), handprinted 51 and painted paper and handprinting on paper, 22 panels, 50.8 x 190 feet. Image courtesy The Estate of Nancy Spero. Figure Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Danuta in Malta 2002, artwork on 52 10 photograph, pigmented inkjet print. 60.96 x 66.04cm. Figure Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Danuta Looking 2002, artwork on 52 11 photograph, pigmented inkjet print. 91.44 x 55.88cm. Figure Meinrad Craighead, Mother and Daughter 1981, oil painting, 54 12 dimensions unknown. Figure Sonya Yong James, Mother and Child 2009, diptych, various types 54 13 of wool felt, 69 x 125 x 4cm. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Eulalia Valldosera, Maternal Bond (Family Ties II no.1) 2012, 55 14 print on barite paper, 6mm forex, aluminum frame, 111 x 163.2cm. Photo courtesy the artist and Carroll /. Fletcher. Figure Sally Smart, Family Tree House (Femmage, Shadows and 55 15 Symptoms) 1999–2002, synthetic polymer paint on felt and fabric with collage elements, size variable (10 x12m approximately). Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Photo courtesy the artist. 10 Figure Lorraine O'Grady, Cross Generational 1980-1994, cibachrome 57 16 diptych one of 16 in the series Miscegenated Family Album. Image courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York. © 2017 Lorraine O’Grady. Figure Ann Hamilton, Near Away 2013, paperback book slices, 65 17 cheesecloth, string, bookbinder's glue, methyl cellulose, steel wire, newsprint, abaca paper, kraft paper, 62.23 x 50.8 x 11.43cm. Photo courtesy the artist and Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Figure Faith Wilding, Sacrifice 1971, room-size installation at the 67 18 Feminist Art Program studio in Fresno, CA, cast life-size figure, cow guts and blood, dead bird, kotex, plastic flowers, candles. Participants were invited to light candles on the altar. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Erika Hoffmann, Paradise and the Fall 2013, image panel, 68 19 dimensions variable as part of a larger-scale multi-panelled installation. Photo courtesy Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin. Figure Kiki Smith, Pyre Woman Kneeling, Pyre Woman on Haunches, Pyre 69 20 Woman with Knees Extended 2002, bronze and wood, 142.2 x 149.9 x 72.4cm per woman. Figure Hayv Kahraman, Mobius Body for Extimacy 2012, installation and 72 21 detailed view. Photo courtesy artist and The Third Line Gallery, Dubai. Figure Hayv Kahraman, DisEmbodied.8. 2012, oil on panel with rawhide 72 22 insert, 121.92 x 187.96cm. Photo courtesy the artist and The Third Line Gallery, Dubai. Figure Roni Horn, ‘Untitled ("A dream dreamt in a dreaming world is not 82 23 really a dream, ... but a dream not dreamt is.”)’ 2013, solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces, 10 parts with heights ranging from 48 to 49.5cm and diameters range from 86 to 91cm. For exhibition On the Road 2014, installation view, Santo Domingo de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Photo courtesy Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Figure Roni Horn, ‘Untitled ("A dream dreamt in a dreaming world is not 82 24 really a dream, ... but a dream not dreamt is.”)’ 2013, solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces, 10 parts with heights ranging from 48 to 49.5cm and diameters range from 86 to 91cm. For exhibition On the Road 2014, installation view, Santo Domingo de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Photo courtesy Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Figure Alinka Echeverria, The Road to Tepeyac 2010, archival pigment 84 25 print, hahnemuhle fine art print, 62 × 80cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Alinka Echeverria, The Road to Tepeyac 2010, archival pigment 84 26 print, hahnemuhle fine art print, 62 × 80cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Annie Leibovitz, A dress worn by Emily Dickinson 2011, from 89 27 “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011). 11 Figure Annie Leibovitz, A gown worn by the opera singer Marian 89 28 Anderson 2011, from “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011). Figure Annie Leibovitz, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada 2009, 89 29 photography, 61.91 × 89.53 cm. Figure Tschäpe, Livia_2 (after the rain series) 2000, cibachrome print, 91 30 50.8 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Tschäpe, Livia_2 (after the rain series) 2003, cibachrome 91 31 print50.8 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Rachel Gomme, Second Skin 2000 reworked in 2008, 101 32 photographic documentation of durational performance. Photographer Jess Wallace for Rachel Gomme. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Gustave Courbet, L'origine du monde [The Origin of the World] 121 33 1866, oil on canvas, 46 x 55cm. Photo courtesy RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski. Figure Cynthia Mailman, God 1977, acrylic on canvas, 274.32 x 152.4cm. 123 34 Photo courtesy Karen Mauch Photography and Rowan University. Figure Kimsooja, Mind of the Mother Earth 1992, thread, ink on used 124 35 cloth, 270 x 217cm. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio. Figure The Sister Chapel, installed at Rowan University Art Gallery West, 126 36 Glassboro, NJ. Photo courtesy Andrew D. Hottle and Rowan University Art Gallery. Figure Maureen Connor, The Sister Chapel Structure designed 1976, 126 37 fabricated 2015–16, nylon and velour over PVC framework, 7.62m. Diameter. Photo courtesy Andrew D. Hottle and Rowan University Art Gallery. Figure Ilise Greenstein, Ceiling of The Sister Chapel 1976, acrylic on 127 38 canvas, reflective vinyl, 548 × 528.32cm. Photo courtesy Rowan University Art Gallery. Figure Monica Sjoo, God Giving Birth 1968, oil on hardboard, 183 x 129 39 122cm, photo credit Nina Monastra. Photo courtesy Museum Anna Nordlander, Skelleftea, Sweden. Figure Judy Chicago, Would God Be Female? 1982, textile banner, 91.4 x 131 40 61cm, textile woven by Audrey Cowan. Photo credit Donald Woodman. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Figure Judy Chicago, When Women Rule the World 2009, four banners 131 41 91.4 x 61cm each, textiles woven by Audrey Cowan. Installation view at the Textile Museum of Canada. Photo credit Jill Kitchener. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Figure Judy Chicago, Birth Tear 1982 (detail of the Birth Project), 132 42 embroidery on silk, 50.8 x 69cm, embroidered by Jane Gaddie Thompson. Photo credit Donald Woodman. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Figure Deborah de Robertis, Performing Mirror of Origin 2014, 134 43 unsolicited performance in front of Gustave Courbet, The Origin 12 of the World 1866, at the RMN-Grand Palais, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Video still courtesy the artist. Figure Mickalene Thomas, Origin of the Universe 1 2012, rhinestones, 136 44 acrylic, oil, and enamel on wood panel, 152.4 x 121.92cm. Collection of the Hudgins Family, New York. Figure An example of a Sheela na gig (12th century) at the Cavan County 138 45 Museum, Ireland. Photo credit Barry James Duff. Figure Jana Brike, Gardener and The Centre of the Universe 2016, oil 139 46 painting, 30 x 30cm. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Valerie de la Dehesa, Spiral Uterus Flower 2010, printed by 141 47 plotter on double weight Fabricio paper, digital print 50x60 cm. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Valerie de la Dehesa, Giant Uterus Flower 2010, pink stretch 141 48 fabric, 15 x 3m. Installation and performance Bosque las encinas, Madrid. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Petrina Hicks, Venus 2013, pigment print, 100 x 100cm. Photo 142 49 courtesy of Rockhampton Art Gallery, Queensland. Figure Anish Kapoor, L'origine du monde 2004, 700cm (length along 143 50 oval’s major axis), concrete and pigment, installed at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Photo courtesy the artist. © Anish Kapoor, 2017. Figure Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris 1926, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 75.9cm. 143 51 Figure Lisa Tolcher, Journey into the Dark Inner Sanctum 2015, wool, 143 52 plastic, wire, acrylic, 300 x 50 x 60cm. Photo courtesy of the artist. Figure Anne Wolf, Earth Cradles 1997–2003, stitched burlap, 146 53 dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist and Chatham College, Pittsburgh PA. Figure Anne Wolf, Passage 1997, mixed media installation. Photo 146 54 courtesy the artist and Hewlett Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Figure Emma Rochester, Out of the Woods 2014, satin, lace, chiffon, silk 152 55 crepe de chine, wood metal tubing and vintage wedding accessories, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Out of the Woods 2014, satin, lace, chiffon, silk 154 56 crepe de chine, wood, metal tubing and vintage wedding accessories, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures 154 57 with amethyst, pearls, beads, rhinestones, wood and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures 158 58 with amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures 158 59 with amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Louise Bourgeois, Fragile Goddess 2002, cloth, 31.7 x 12.7 x 160 60 15.2cm. 13 Figure Annette Messager, Penetration 1993-1994, cotton, polyester, 161 61 angora wool, nylon, electric lights, dimensions variable. Figure Annette Messager, Penetration 1993–1994, cotton, polyester, 161 62 angora wool, nylon, electric lights, dimensions variable. Figure Janell Wysock & Emma Rochester, Leaning into the Earth 2014, 164 63 textile sculptures, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Janell Wysock and Emma Rochester. Figure Janell Wysock & Emma Rochester, Leaning into the Earth 2014, 164 64 documentation of performance. Photo courtesy Diane Roka and Janell Wysock and Emma Rochester. Figure Emma Rochester, Detail of Petition Tree otherwise known as Hole, 166 65 Whole, Holy 2016, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova. Figure Emma Rochester, Knotting and tying together Petition Tree also 166 66 known as Hole, Whole, Holy at FACres 2016, mirror, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova. Figure Emma Rochester, Detail of Petition Tree otherwise known as Hole, 166 67 Whole, Holy 2016, mirror, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova. Figure Emma Rochester, Canvases for Petition Tree as a Work in Process 170 68 2016, Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, Leighton Artists Colony at The Banff Centre for the Arts. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting tying 174 69 offering ribbons onto the sacred myrtle tree at the Paliani Convent in Crete, Greece as part of a Ariadne Institute Goddess Pilgrimage with Carol P Christ 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Sandra M. Stanton, Artemis/Diana 2006, oil on linen, 71.2 x 178 70 60.96cm. Image courtesy the artist. © Sandra M. Stanton. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting 179 71 pilgrimage to the Black Madonna Icon at the Monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa (Grace of Panagia -Virgin Mary) in Amorgos 2014-2016, digital print, 128 x 182cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Louise Bourgeois, Welcoming Hands 1996, bronze, varying 183 72 dimensions up to 50.8 x 76. 2cm. Figure Louise Bourgeois, Welcoming Hands 1996, bronze, varying 183 73 dimensions up to 50.8 x 76. 2cm. Figure Emma Rochester, Cast of the artist’s hand emulating an 185 74 Aphrodite Mudra whilst holding a pomegranate for In Her Hands exhibition 2014, bronze, 18.8 x10.8 x 8.5cm. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Cast of the artist’s hand emulating an Aphrodite 185 75 Mudra for In Her Hands exhibition 2014, bronze, 19 x 9.2 x 5.8cm. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting 187 76 pilgrimages with Carol P Christ to sites such as Knossos and 14 Phaistos on the island of Crete Greece 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting 188 77 pilgrimage journey to solar temples at Santorini, Greece 2014- 2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting a repeat 189 78 visit to Saint Sarah associated with cults of the Black Madonna at Saintes-Maries de la Mer, Camargue, France 2015-2016, digital print, 128 x 182cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting my 190 79 departure via tour bus as part of a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Black Madonna of Montserrat, Spain 2015-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, upholstery weight 191 80 cotton, silk crepe de chine, amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting my 193 81 pilgrimage to Venus Mound at Forres, Scotland, UK 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Pilgrimage to witness the ceremonial banquet 196 82 that is Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Table” created 1974–79 at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor of the Brooklyn Museum 17 July 2014, digital print featuring ceramic, porcelain, textile, and an installation by Judy Chicago with a total size of 1463 × 1463cm, 12.7 x 27.84 cm. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Shigeko Kubota, Shigeko Kubota performing Vagina Painting 197 83 photographic documentation of performance during Perpetual Fluxfest, Cinematheque, New York, July 4, 1965 1965. Figure Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll 1975, photographs, suite of 197 84 13 gelatin silver prints on fibre paper, each mounted on museum board, colophon page, in clothbound clamshell case, each photograph 28 x 35.5 cm. Figure Emma Rochester, Riding the pYnk Cosmos 2015, collaged 200 85 photograph documenting 2.5-hour durational performance. . Photographer Josephine Fagan for Emma Rochester. Image courtesy the artist. Figure Documentation of my watercolour paintings in process within the 200 86 Gerin Lajoie studio at Leighton Artist’s Colony 2016. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, The Banff Centre for the Arts, 2016. Figure Documentation of studio and watercolour paintings by Emma 201 87 Christina Lucia Rochester at Leighton Artist’s Colony 2016. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, The Banff Centre for the Arts, 2016. Figure Emma Rochester with assistance from craftswoman Nancy 201 88 Gruman, Translation of one watercolour artefact created at Leighton Artist’s Colony into embroidery on a test fabric not indicative of final fabric 2017, linen, metallic and cotton threads, 18 x 18cm. Photo courtesy the artists. 15 Figure Working in my Studio as part of the BAIR Winter program at The 203 89 Banff Centre for the Arts 2015, photographic documentation. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor at The Banff Centre for the Arts. Figure Documentation of artist in the studio creating the skin for a 203 90 Miriam’s drum using found and received pennies 2015. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor at The Banff Centre for the Arts. Figure Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s drum, 204 91 Documentation of performance with focus on the use of a upcycled Miriam drum from self created fabrics 2015. Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts. Figure Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s 204 92 drum, Each Time the Circle Turns it is Not the Same: Women’s body and the sense of the sacred throughout history 2015. Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts, Telus Studio, The Banff Centre for the Arts Figure Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s 205 93 drum, Each Time the Circle Turns it is Not the Same: Women’s body and the sense of the sacred throughout history 2015, performance incorporating text and folk dance. Telus Studio, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts. Figure Emma Rochester, Ceramic Forms Pertaining to Perpetual Motion 206 94 and Generative Growth Created at Ateliers Four Winds, Aureille, Bouche de Rhone, France 2016, collage of video stills. Video still collage courtesy the artist. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of Amulets and Talismans 209 95 consisting of Three Dimensional Mudras and Yoniroses on the raised platform in the exhibition space of “In Her Hands” 2017, epoxy resin, pigments and colour dye, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of Front Window Display for the 209 96 exhibition “In Her Hands” at POP Gallery 2017, Gold leather, fabric sculpture and resin amulet, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of Three in One Artefacts. That 210 97 are Simultaneously Processional Banners, Healing Cloths and Ceremonial Robes “In Her Hands” 2017, Custom-designed print on upholstery weight cotton, caramel gold linen, digitised embroideries, embroidery thread and tri colour fringing, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of Sculptural Fibre Forms of 210 98 Women on Pilgrimage with Emphasis on Vaginal Motifs in Reference to 1970s Core Feminist Imagery for the Exhibition “In Her Hands” 2017, Custom-designed print on upholstery weight cotton and silk crepe, block colour cotton material, synthetic hair, and haberdashery thread, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of the Front Room of the Gallery 211 16 99 Space for graduating exhibition “In Her Hands” with Emphasis Placed on the Secluded and Narrow Entrance to the Rear Gallery on Left Side of the Back Wall 2017, Textile sculpture, haberdashery thread, stuffing, wood, wire and upholstery weight cotton, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Emma Rochester, Documentation of Textile Form and Passageway 211 100 of Banners in Graduating Exhibition “In Her Hands” 2017, Textile sculpture, haberdashery thread, stuffing, wood, wire and upholstery weight cotton, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. Figure Jill Orr, Bleeding Trees 1979, performance for the camera 221 101 photographed on 35ml slide. Photographer Elizabeth Campbell for Jill Orr. Photo courtesy Jill Orr. © Jill Orr. Figure Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony 222 102 Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Installation view of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC. Figure Mary Beth Edelson, Woman Rising/Spirit 1973, artwork on 222 103 photograph using oil paint, ink, and china marker, 25.4 x 30.48cm. Figure Cheri Gaulke, This Is My Body 1982, 35 mm slide of performance. 224 104 Photographer Sheila Ruth for Cheri Gaulke. Collection of The Otis College of Art and Design Library. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard, The Expulsion from the 225 105 Temple/Nude Female Christ 1969, documentation of performance May 29th at Børsen in Copenhagen. Figure Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard, The Expulsion from the 225 106 Temple/Nude Female Christ 1969, documentation of performance May 29th at Børsen in Copenhagen. Figure Rebecca Horn, Unicorn 1970-72, video still, model wears unicorn 227 107 made out of wood, fabric and metal. Figure Louise Bourgeois, Latex Costume 1970, 35mm slide documenting 229 108 performance. Figure Anne Gauldin and Denise Yarfitz, The Waitress Goddess Diana 230 109 1978. 35mm slide of performance. Collection of The Otis College of Art and Design Library. Figure Anne Gauldin and Denise Yarfitz, The Waitress Goddess Diana 230 110 1978. 35mm slide of performance. Collection of The Otis College of Art and Design Library. Figure Hannah Wilke, Venus Pareve 1982–84, painted plaster of Paris, 232 111 Each 25.1 x 13.2 x 8.4cm. Figure Anne Gauldin and Cheri Gaulke, The Malta Project 1978, 35mm 232 112 slide, documentation of performance at prehistoric temples in Malta. Photo credit Mario Damato. Photo courtesy the artists. Figure Ana Mendieta, La Vivificación de la Carne (from the ‘El Laberinto 233 113 de Venus’ series) [The Vivification of the Flesh, from the ‘Labyrinth of Venus’ series) 1982. Figure Gestare Art Collective, Barbara's Womb Walk for Nané on the 233 114 snow covered campus of Southern Illinois University Carbondale 17 where she teaches 2011. Documentation of performance by R. Michael Fisher on February 6, 2011 between 4:10-5pm CST. Photo courtesy Barbara Bickel. Figure Solange Pessoa, Untitled 2011-2012, clay on vinyl, 234 115 12 panels, each 200 x 90cm. Photo courtesy Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Photo by Chi Lam. Figure Kubra Khademi, Kubra Khademi was surrounded by a mainly male 235 116 crowd, which threw insults and stones during her walk 2015. Photographer Naim Karimi. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Kubra Khademi, In this Thursday, March 5, 2015 photo, Afghan 235 117 performance artist Kubra Khademi talks about her art piece, a suit of armor with large breasts and buttocks, during an interview with The Associated Press in Kabul, Afghanistan. Khademi donned the suit of armor and wore it on the streets of Kabul to protest Afghanistan’s endemic harassment 2015. Photo credit Massoud Hossaini. Photo courtesy the artist. Figure Elana Stonaker, Artist As Muse in Ojai with Buckley 2015, digital 238 118 print featuring various textile elements, beads and paint. Photo courtesy Justin Tyler Close.

18 Acknowledgments

This PhD project was made possible by a Griffith University Research Scholarship. This scholarship afforded the time, funding, and space required to participate in perpetual pilgrimage to artist in residences and thealogical creative geographies as contemporary performance, with the intent of translating knowledge gleaned into artefacts.

The mentoring I received at the Queensland College of Art through Dr Anne Taylor, and Professor Ross Woodrow has made a profound impact on my artistic and personal development; enhancing processes of innovative thinking and making in experimental and grounded ways. Dr Anne Taylor’s unwavering support and deep knowledge of feminist theory and materiality has been sustaining, nourishing and inspiring. Dr Julie Fragar’s readings of artefacts and potential associations, was highly considered and provided impetus for the creation of new work. Professor Ross Woodrow’s commitment to pushing creative making has seen me extend the artistic modalities that I worked with past my expectations.

This PhD would not have come to fruition without the generous sharing of knowledge and welcoming acceptance of Carol P. Christ and Laura Shannon. Christine Hollinetz and Vasilis Markakis, conservators associated with the Archaeological Museum of Athens, provided a safe harbour in which to learn new skills with an eye to the past. Ilene Sova from the Feminist Art Conference exemplified non-academic non-hierarchical ways of art making and new theory production at the edges of the feminist frontier. Dr Steven Muir’s guidance and recommendations from a studies of religion and the classics perspective has been invaluable. Sabine Amoore Pinon and Vianney Pinon have provided sublime humour, detailed knowledge and a committed belief in the possibilities of art making. Sarah Wilmot’s profound sense of listening, and friendship. Jess Beard's enthusiasm and encouragement. Isabela Castro Keski-Frantti and Risto Keski- Frantti’s loving-kindness in action. Suzette Creedon and family’s whimsical

19 support. Janell Wysock and Ross Earhart’s creative inspiration and Philadelphian know how. Eva Rosenorn’s attention to detail and quick eye for omissions has made the submission of this PhD possible. Claudia Husband at the QCA Galleries has been invaluable in preparation for the PhD’s culminating exhibition.

My international perambulations would not have been possible without the assistance of the Leighton Artists’ Colony, The Banff Centre for the Arts, The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Jiwar-Centre for Creation, Artscape Gibraltar Point, and Ateliers Fourwinds.

I dedicate this work to my esteemed foremothers

Luciana Dalese Karna Gooda Sheila Casteleign Lancia Hutchinson Solana Ursula Hanes Jeanne Amoore Barbara Rochester

21 Chapter 1: Introduction–Crossing the Threshold into Thealogical Terrains

In 1977, Mary Beth Edelson sought to enact womanhood as sacred, and performed her affirmation in the Grapceva Cave on Hvar Island off the coast of what was then Yugoslavia. Inside this entrance to the earth, Edelson documented Grapceva Neolithic Cave Series: See For Yourself (1977, figure 1), a performance artefact of inspired cyclical ritual to a Mother Goddess. Edelson created a performance of pilgrimage in action, documented by photographs, transcending the divide between secularised contemporary art and the reverent aesthetic. Through this performance artefact, Edelson acknowledged the thealogical geography of the cave as womb, Earth as Mother, and the God-as-She, bringing alternative, sexuate self-identified performance rituals into a contemporary art paradigm.1

Thirty-seven years later, frontier feminists Kiki Smith, Marina Abramović, Carolee Schneemann, Laurie Anderson, Ann Carson, Lydia Lunch, Bianca Cassidy, Antony Hegarty, Johanna Constantine, Sierra and Bianca Casady, and Kembra Pfahler met at a contemporary art gallery, The Hole, New York, to present Future Feminism (2014, figure 2). This was an exhibition and performance series that called for a revitalisation of reverence for woman. "Restore the female archetype as central to creation" was one of the tenets promoted by their manifesto, carved into colossal rose quartz crystal discs (that had been extracted from the ground) (2014, figure 3-5).2 Despite the divide of decades, both of these works embody feminist theory, which identifies a gender balance in the depiction of the divine as a necessary step in creating gender equality.

Figure 1 Mary Beth Edelson, Grapceva Neolithic Cave Series: See For Yourself 1977, Artwork on photograph using oil paint, ink, and china marker, documentation ritual performance on the island of Hvar, Former Yugoslavia, 50.8 x 50.8cm. Image courtesy the artist.

Figure 2 Johanna Constantine Bianca Casady Kembra Pfahler, Antony Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Future Feminism Video 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York.

Figure 3 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Gallery View of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York.

Figure 4 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Gallery View of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York.

Figure 5 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Future Feminists’ XI: The Subjugation of Women and the Earth is One and the Same 2014, rose quartz and engraving, 127 x 127 x 190.5cm. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC, New York.

25 These two artefacts have been addressed here because this PhD project, The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice is situated within the conceptual frameworks symbolised by them. Edelson’s Grapceva Neolithic Cave Series can be seen as reflective of early second-wave feminist thealogical enquiry where artists and theorists explored creative depictions of God-as-She, personal rather than institutionalised ritual action and considered new ways to use the body and ceremony in contemporary art. Whilst for the purposes of this exegesis what is specifically exciting about Future Feminism is that as an exhibition it demonstrates a contemporary revival of God-as-Woman, challenging the lack of identifiable sexuate depictions of God-as-She in Western–European religious institutions. Both these works represent the way in which artists have, over time, created a legacy of public and private artistic protest to the lack of gender equity in the visualisation of the sacred.

The focus of this PhD project, The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice, interlinks both of these artefacts and aspires to experiment with translating continuous pilgrimage, and its role in affirming and empowering women, into tangible art forms by travelling between newly revised gendered sites of reverence and artist-in-residence communities. Enabling this PhD project to sit within the continuum of affirmative thealogical ethics and action represented by these two artefacts.

The concepts and theories contained in the terms ‘thealogy’ and ‘newly revised gendered sites of reverence,’ which were used in these beginning paragraphs will be briefly touched on further into this introductory chapter. Also unpacked here will be ‘pilgrimage’ and the concept of ‘nomadism.’ This process of conceptual definition will be interwoven with the outlining of the core focus for each subsequent chapter so that the reader can have a metaphorical map of the layout of this exegesis.

26 This data cartography is complex because of the many layered interdisciplinary fields which influence the research, but there are four main types of artefacts that influence this exegesis. Firstly, a canon of relevant visual art (artefacts that reference women and the sacred, women and pilgrimage, women and walking art); secondly, the long durational performance I enact; thirdly, the art that greets me upon actual arrival at a sacred site (the aesthetic of non-normative sites of reverence as creative geographies); and finally, the distillation of this embodied experience into art forms suitable for gallery environs. For this reason the exegesis, and respective artefacts are complex and intertwined examples of research in motion towards the Sacred-as-She.

Situating the Research

By travelling towards and between aesthetic landscapes pertaining to the renegotiation of the God-as-Woman, and defined by women themselves, I have experimented with multiple art mediums to translate a durational performance of a transgressive psycho-spiritual nature into both short performance works and reflective gallery exhibitions.

Prior to my studies in visual art, I received a first class honours degree in Religious Studies from the University of Queensland. Therefore, I consider myself to be both an artist and a scholar with a background in alternative religious thinking. The expressive subjectivity generated by my liberal education inspired this prolonged performative odyssey, not as prescriptive practice, but as an exploratory inquiry into gendered experience within sites associated with God- as-She. For this reason, I provide an overview of my methodological approach in the next chapter, Chapter Two: Embodiment–A Haptic Methodology.

Selecting pilgrimage sites as part of this bodily-led research was highly considered and specific. Each identifiable destination relates to the canon of feminist art, whereby depictions of God-as-Woman in selected gendered terrains became the focus of much artwork in second-wave feminist art practice.3

27 Artefacts that depict the sensual bodily motion of journey making to the Sacred- as-She will also be explored in Chapter Two.

By setting out on a journey to multiple destinations rather than focusing on a singular moment of arrival, I enacted a performance-led practice that merges with notions of the nomad, allowing my embodied research experience to ebb and flow between states of the pilgrim and the nomad respectively. Whilst ‘pilgrimage’ will be defined in detail in Chapter Three: Pilgrimage, the concept of nomadic flux between moving states of becoming used in my project will be discussed below.

As a doctoral candidate, I am interested in intertwining personal stories, theories, and the performance-led research I embody on this nomadic perambulation towards and within the sacred as She. In this way, I challenge the paradigm of the detached scholar by presenting the validity of personal stories of a spiritual/religious nature in academia. I combine feminist scholarship with experiences of visits to the sites themselves through the lens of the artist.

Yet, because I am moving between and betwixt places, my work is also posited within the frames of walking art practice. Currently within this genre of contemporary art-making, there exists an active affirmative approach to identify, acknowledge, and promote women who walk as art form. This movement aims to ensure that women are not erased or unmentioned in the canon of walking art. This is evidenced in my presentation at the Women Walking conference, which was part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2016.

For the past three years, I have delved deep on these journeys, quests and pilgrimages to landscapes and environs that had previously been acknowledged in either artefact or text by feminist artists and scholars. Carol P. Christ, Mary Beth Edelson, Monica Sjoo, Meinrad Craighead, Rosemary Radford Ruether and Asphodel Long are some of the ecofeminists and Goddess activists who went in search of God-as-She, generating an avant-garde resource of specific thealogical

28 geographies. Intriguingly, within ecofeminist and thealogical art circles, the Earth itself is seen as Mother, luminous womb, Matrix, and Gaia, so in many ways the God-as-Woman is intrinsic to this durational performance through pilgrimage landscapes.

Reclamation of the God-as-She is currently possible due to the revolutionary alternative artefacts and texts that the above-mentioned women and many other like-minded creative people have made explicit. The gendered landscapes of devotion pertaining to the concept of God-as-She, along with interpretations of the sites to which I travelled, will be discussed in Chapter Three: Pilgrimage.

The combination of continuous temporal and physical planes of pilgrimage and nomadism expressed through art in a way that is not passive but rather generates change and transformation for women is in line with affirmative and restorative ethics at the forefront of current feminist philosophy. Affirmation and empowerment through the depiction of God-as-Woman will be discussed in Chapter Four: Affirmative Ethics. Moving beyond dichotomies into inclusiveness through a process of revitalising classic core imagery of early feminist art, with its prominent use of vulva iconography, will also be addressed in Chapter Four.

A heighted focus on the body means that I used my physicality as a focal point to engage with the selected pilgrimage sites and the transitional experience of travelling through multiple destinations. My body becomes constructed space, the theatre and the sensing instrument. In this performative space, I am able to observe the reactions within and without my body and then to translate these into both static and performance artefacts. In this way, I am my own first audience. Through presentation of artefacts in a gallery space, I invite the viewer to move around them, encouraging the audience to become a co-participant in the exhibition and the thealogical pilgrimage experience. In Chapter Five: In Her Hands, the creation of artefacts throughout this PhD project while on the journey and in reflection will be explained.

29 Thealogical Enquiry

The term ‘thealogical’ is central to my project because ‘thealogy’ is the significant and durable inquiry into the nature and elucidation of God-as-Woman.4 Thealogy refers to both a consciousness and a discipline within the university context where women’s spirituality is taught and researched.5 Because of the personal and communal nature of thealogy, it has evolved in relation to the various valuable contributions reflective of the collisions, commonalities, and backgrounds of the scholars and practitioners who espouse and undertake this non-normative meaning-making approach to the sacred-as-She.6 New theory in thealogy is developed in women’s-only participatory groups (such as the consciousness raising of second-wave feminism), academic modules, popular blogging, and higher degree research.7

Fear of gender stereotyping and stabilising gender identity meant that thealogy as a feminist subject received much criticism in relation to essentialism as a fixed identity based on sexuality.8 Yet, thealogy is a discourse created by women in order to provide nourishing and sustaining ways of generating an affirmative understanding of God-as-Woman and as a proactive affirmation to rectify and create gender equilibrium in the study of transcendence.9 Mary Daly notes that the meaning and representations of God is a cultural symbol that epitomises patriarchy, where He is celebrated and She is renounced. Patriarchy promotes an aesthetic language that creates an imbalance in gender power relations; one that seeps into and supports cultural modes of behaviour.10 Daly writes of “de- reifying” God from a supreme male being, to one that can be seen dwelling in women’s bodies as well as all forms of life.11 Susan Shooter talks of the male metaphors of God that effect the exclusion and oppression of women as a “theology of submission”.12 Asphodel Long emphasises the need to equalise religious and academic discourses as a form of women’s activism:

If feminist spirituality is to realise its potential of re-energizing and re- inspiring women to make use of the past to redraw the future, it must also reclaim our right to our intellectual status. But this need not be redrawn 30 on standards set and approved by male academic hierarchies. If there is a message from the books that I have discussed that for me overshadows all else, it is that women’s ways and women’s cultures, women’s methods must be autonomous. To regain our full personhood we need scholars working on our history but scholars who are orientated towards acceptance of the female as a standard, not as St. Augustine’s defective male.13

Thus, thealogians went in search of concepts, language, rites, rituals, gestures, and symbols of God-as-She in the past and present to stabilise and equalise the concept of God-as-both-Mother-and-Father.14 However, as Carol P. Christ notes, many feminist religious scholars wanted to remove the concept of a Father God all together.15 Instead of denying the concept of God-as-He I am specifically interested in traversing disciplines such as art, history, and research on location to generate and sustain meaning-making around God-as-Woman. This includes identifying sacred geographical terrains where the reverent experience of God- as-Woman could be felt. Thealogy therefore is an action of reflection and of physical process, a combination designed to understand the meaning of God-as- Woman within and through the body.16 It is an active approach to unearthing an extensive amount of affirmative research relating to God-as-She across cultures, time, and space.17 For this reason, this PhD project follows suit and is a dynamic act of physical and craft activism: a strategy of action designed to reinforce, enhance and generate an instinct around God-as-Woman in contemporary art practice.

This generation and unearthing of new knowledge by thealogians is then subject to self-identification, contemplation, and personalization,18 so as to create embodied forms of knowledge production, including story telling that empowers women’s voices in bold and alternative ways and that exist outside of standardised patriarchal academic structures.19 As Christ articulates, “The only valid source of authority is to be found in individuals and communities that continually interpret and reinterpret texts and traditions in new situations.”20

31 The complex individuations and numerous epithets of a female divine are reflective of intersectional feminism and as such mirrors women’s own multiple identities.21 The many names and depictions of God-as-She represent this process of continual interpretation over time, emphasising personal experience which in turn, negates and is the antidote to criticisms of “Goddess essentialism”.22

Currently, thealogy is experiencing an unheralded resurfacing, and rise to prominence as many of its core tenets align with a new religious trend where practitioners blend together diverse spiritualities/faiths.23 Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann first coined the term ‘nomadic theology’ to describe this blending of multiple belief systems as active,24 one where practitioners shift seamlessly between faiths as they discern and make meaningful patterns in their spiritual lives by crossing borders.25 This dynamic synthesis of beliefs and ideas—which includes but is not limited to understanding God-as-Woman—is now receiving visibility and salience due to the intrepid and groundbreaking work of thealogians from the 1960s and 1970s who paved the way for a liberational thealogical freedom for all “living things”.26

However, Nicola Slee highlights the notion that theologians conceptualise, rather than visualise, God-as-Woman.27 I find Slee’s division between ways of understanding the nuances of spiritual and religious aesthetics interesting as they mark a difference between imagining, thinking, seeing, and experiencing God-as-She. Slee suggests there is a history of thealogians and artists contextualising an image that may first have been experienced from a book rather than palpably experienced in the flesh.

Thealogians created a readily available list of identifiable landscapes in which God-as-Woman has been honoured over time. Yet, only some travelled to these sites, creating a volume of unique literature that is realised in either theoretical or personal form, often referred to as ‘spiritual memoirs’ or ‘visionary journey writing’.28 In these texts, which are closely aligned with journalling, the women

32 who upheld the mantle of thealogical practice reflect on their first-hand experience of the image of God-as-Woman as embodied and physical through the primary act of witnessing.29

Journeys to the Sacred

Following in the footsteps of these artists and scholars, I have designed my doctoral research to ensure that their work relating to both early feminist art and thealogy is not erased but instead my three-year long durational performance and respective exhibitions beckon the past into the future. To complement this doctoral candidature as an act of memorial, preservation, and generation of thealogical inquiry in contemporary art practice, I began to siphon out exact locations of God-as-Woman in tangible sacred landscapes from imagery and texts. I thereby re-identified previously acknowledged specific sites of the Sacred-as-She, embodying a ritualised cyclical choreography in motion, as I arrived, experienced, departed, and returned to a site made new by the transformations I enacted.

The actions of travelling to the site as both artist and scholar and later creating interdisciplinary artefacts for gallery environs reflect my own status as witness of God-as-She; a visual testimony that revolves around the identification of rigorous themes within thealogical artefacts and texts. I began to contemplate many of the reoccurring ideas that preeminent thealogical researchers continue to reveal. These include but are not limited to the following:

o The aesthetic and visual language of God-as-Woman that is specific to pilgrimage sites.

o The resurgence in motifs of God-as-Woman in art, including imagery of the moon, spiral, labyrinth, vulva, nest, and earth.30

o The creation of an empowering and affirming pilgrimage practice to non-normative sites of gender reverence to help heal and make whole those who identify as female.

33 o The use of the body as an act of liberation, one that draws on notions of the pilgrim and the nomad as defining and complementary motifs; and the translation of sacred journeying into contemporary art.

In writing or depicting their sacred journeys and developing complementary theories around these travails, the above-mentioned artists, scholars, religious thinkers and many other revolutionary women created a pioneering genre of art and literature: a visual canon that identifies, acknowledges and generates experiences of God-as-Woman. Their actions gave permission for future generations to explore a newly revised gendered language of the sacred and the places themselves. They formed a generative vocabulary that reinforced the materiality of women’s bodies and the specificity of their ways of knowing. Now it is possible for women to glimpse the sacred manifest within their flesh and in their image, as a result of the transgressions that these women and others made in the past.

Thealogical Terrains

I use the phrase ‘newly revised gendered language of the sacred’ here because religious traditions are already gendered;31 for example, ‘Lord in Heaven’ and ‘Holy Father’ are just a couple of the male-orientated signifiers of the sacred in the Christian tradition. In Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly paved the way for other religious thinkers and artists alike to respond to this point directly in their work. For example, in China Galland’s seminal text Longing For Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna – A Ten Year Journey in Search of the Female Face of God, the author describes a moment when she attends a church service for the first time in years, but has a visceral reaction as she hears the words:

“And God gave man dominion,” “Our Father,” “His Body,” “His Blood,” “Glory be to the Father.” Each time I hear “God the Father,” “His,” “man,” I feel smaller and smaller, as though someone in the room is suffocating me.32

34 Of course, women do make an appearance in patriarchal religious texts and practice, but these women are seen as too pure or too promiscuous.33 Such conflicting embodiments of the sacred are far from desirable examples for many women. In short, they are icons that embody unrealistic role models today. One only need to look at representations of the immaculately conceiving Virgin Mary compared to depictions of Lilith to recognise the contemporary lack of identification with such images and texts around women and the sacred. Thus, a significant part of this process of seeking, identifying and travelling to gendered sites of reverence was to make a physical break with the current cultural norms I inherited. I wish to make explicit the newly revised visual language around God- as-Woman in site-specific locations, in contrast to the patriarchal religious norm dominant in many of the world’s religious traditions, which see the divine as transcendent, but male.

The word ‘revised’ is also used here because many artists and scholars are convinced by Marija Gimbutas’s theory of ancient Mother Goddess worship found across Europe and the Middle East.34 So in many ways, this work may simply reference a resurfacing, remembering, and a recreation of a visual language that has already been in existence for millennia. But the full and rich expression of this ancient Mother Goddess through both art and terminology has been demeaned, desecrated, destroyed, and lost over time.

By performing a fluid, individual series of journeys where the emphasis rests on a personal passage of the self-in-motion through highly specified terrain, I was able to immerse myself in a vast number of these sites while also considering my identification with the term ‘woman’.

Woman as Multitudinous

This project does not seek to define 'woman' as a singular constrictive identity but rather, as Luce Irigaray profoundly suggests, takes sexuate difference as its starting point.35 I am also informed in this regard by the work of Rosi Braidotti

35 and Carol P. Christ among other contemporary feminist scholars. This exegesis does not set out to pinpoint where sexuate difference lies, but rather acknowledges sexual self-identification, and in doing so recognises that anatomy does not determine one’s destiny. Considering depictions of God-as-Woman does not posit a singular, constrained, and essentialist form of 'woman,' but as 'woman' with an open fate and thus limitless embodiments.

Recognising the mutable, amorphous expression of women is exemplified by the notion that there are as many ways to be woman and experience the world as woman as there are women. Each one is shaped by her experience of language, gender, race, economics, point of birth, duties, political experience, time of birth, association with biology at birth and her experience of time, among other influences.

My body's perambulations between the women’s sites encountered in these pilgrimages, as well as with the artefacts therein, generated an inquiry into the affirmative role that depicting and experiencing the God-as-Woman can create. Travelling to these sites previously identified as sacred over a long durational performance invites participation in a process of discovery and renewal, one that reinforces and invites social change.

Enacting a performance around the sacred in accessible form invites a new use of liberation theology, one that leaves behind its previous application in economics and instead encourages women to become effective agents. The performance I enact is a form of physical activism, one that invites a liberal educational reading. By evoking God on the surface of the skin and within the body’s senses creates new ways of reducing oppositional duality between the sacred and the mundane; metaphysical and physical; transcendent and immanent. Of course, those perpetuating a male-orientated understanding of God would see these dichotomies as natural; yet, my work aims to move beyond the expulsion of women from the sacred. By deconstructing the old in order to move into the new,

36 a new liberation theology for women is possible that affirms their physicality as sacred and thus no longer separates spirit from matter.

“The Embodied Artefact” is an inquiry into states of becoming whole as woman through an embodiment of God-as-She. Is it possible to conceptualise a quality of the sacred that is all encompassing if women are considered less than sacred? For example, the term ‘Goddess’ or phrase ‘God-as-Woman’ often receive amused, cynical, or deep personal reactions when discussed openly. There is a ‘charge’ around describing the Sacred-as-She. How, then, can artist/scholars talk of a God that is beyond personification if there still remains an outright rejection of woman as a quality of God in the Western–European religious tradition? And how can an affirmation of God-as-Woman be expressed in contemporary art? These are the questions to which this PhD project responds.

1 For more information on the terminology of God-as-She please see Carol P. Christ, "Whatever Happened to Goddess and God-She? Why Do Jews and Christians Still Pray to a Male God?," European Society of Women in Theological Research Journal 18 (2010); She Who Changes: Re- Imagining the Divine in the World, vol. 1st (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Luce Irigaray, In the Beginning She Was (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); Grace Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999); Michael Rea, "Gender as a Divine Attribute," Religious Studies 52, no. 01 (2015). 2 Katherine Brooks, "Five Women Artists Are Setting the Stage for a Future Feminism," The Huffington Post: Art and Culture, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/05/future- feminism_n_5769356.html; Anon,"Future Feminism," http://theholenyc.com/2014/08/15/future-feminism-2/. 3 Jennie Klein, "Goddess: Feminist Art and Spirituality in the 1970s," Feminist Studies 35, no. 3 (2009). 4 Valerie Saiving, "The Human Situation: A Feminine View," in Womanspirit Rising - a Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. Carol P Christ and Judith Plaskow (SanFrancisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1979); Carol P. Christ and Emma Trout, "Alternative Images of God: Communal Theology Conference of Women Theologians," in Conference of Women Theologians (Alverno College: Alverno College Library Archives and Feminism and Religion Online, 1971); Carol P. Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections," in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper, 1979); Naomi Goldenberg, The Changing of the Gods (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979). 5 Susan B. Marine and Ruth Lewis, "“I'm in This for Real”: Revisiting Young Women's Feminist Becoming," Women's Studies International Forum 47 (2014). 6 Response by Mary E. Hunt to the claims of Gina Messina-Dysert, "Special Series Part I: Women Blogging Theo/Alogy," FSR: Feminist Studies in Religion, http://www.fsrinc.org/blog/special- series-part-i%C2%A0-women-blogging-theoalogy/. 7 "Women and Blogging: An Exercise in the Thealogy of Carol Christ," Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 23, no. 2 (2011); "Special Series Part I: Women Blogging Theo/Alogy". 8 Deborah M. Withers, "What Is Your Essentialism Is My Immanent Flesh!: The Ontological Politics of Feminist Epistemology," European Journal of Women's Studies 17, no. 3 (2010). 9 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973); Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990); Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); Elizabeth Hedrick, "The Early Career of Mary Daly: A Retrospective," Feminist Studies 39, no. 2 (2013). 10 Carol P. Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later," Feminist Theology 20, no. 3 (2012). 11 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), xvii. 12 Susan Shooter, "How Feminine Participation in the Divine Might Renew the Church and Its Leadership," Feminist Theology 22, no. 2 (2014). 13 Long Asphodel, "Feminism and Spirituality: A Review of Recent Publications 19751981," Women's Studies International Forum 5, no. 1 (1982): 108. 14 For specific examples of how feminist research reclaimed women's traditions through rites and rituals please refer to; Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); Zsuzsanna Budapest, The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries (Oakland, CA: Wingbow Press, 1980). 15 Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later," 244. 16 Beverley Clack, "Thealogy and Theology: Mutually Exclusive or Creatively Interdependent?," ibid.7, no. 21 (1999).

17 Angela Y Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1981); Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. (New York: Macmillian, 1976); Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1993); Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1990); Alice Walker, "The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven," in Anything We Love Can Be Saved (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997); "We Have a Beautiful Mother," in Her Blue Body Everything We Know, ed. Alice Walker (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991). 18 Mary Catherine Hilkert, "Desire, Gender, and God-Talk: Sarah Coakley's Feminist Contemplative Theology," Modern Theology 30, no. 4 (2014). 19 Christ, She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World, 1st. 20 "Can Good Theology Change the World? Part 3: Embodied Theology by Carol P. Christ," Women’s Studies and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University, https://feminismandreligion.com/2016/09/05/can-good-theology-change-the-world-part-3- embodied-theology-by-carol-p-christ/. 21 Paul Reid-Bowen, Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy (Burlington, VT; Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Pub, 2007). 22 Carol P. Christ, "Essentialism Reconsidered by Carol P. Christ," Women’s Studies and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University, https://feminismandreligion.com/2014/09/15/essentialism-reconsidered-by-carol-p-christ/; "Is It Essentialist to Speak of Earth as Our Mother?," Women’s Studies and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University. 23 Anne Musso, "An Act of Going: Musings on a Feminist Engagement with Theological Nomadism," SeaChanges: The Journal of Women Scholars of Religion and Theology 4, no. December (2004). 24 Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann, "Nomadic Theology: Crossing the Lines of Traditions in Theology," in Testing the Boundaries: Self, Faith, Interpretation and Changing Trends in Religious Studies, ed. Patricia ‘Iolana and Samuel Tongue (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). 25 Nicola Slee, "Some Patterns and Processes of Women’s Faith Development," Journal of Beliefs and Values 21, no. 1 (2000). 26 Carol P. Christ, "Feminist Theology as Post-Traditional Thealogy," in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. Susan Frank Parsons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later."; "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections." 27 Nicola Slee, "Visualizing, Conceptualizing, Imagining and Praying the Christa: In Search of Her Risen Forms," Feminist Theology 21, no. 1 (2012). 28 Catherine B. Emanuel, "The Archetypal Mother: The Black Madonna in Sue Monk Kidd's the Secret Life of Bees," West Virginia University Philological Papers 52 (2005); Ellen Burton Harrington, Scribbling Women & the Short Story Form: Approaches by American & British Women Writers (New York: Peter Lang, 2008); Hedrick, "The Early Career of Mary Daly: A Retrospective."; Sheila Hassell Hughes, "'Eye to Eye': Using Women's Literature as Lenses for Feminist Theology," Literature and Theology 16, no. 1 (2002); Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F. Sawyer, Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred (Burlington, VT Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008). 29 Rosemary Radford Ruether, "My Life Journey," Dialog 45, no. 3 (2006); "Feminism and Patriarchal Religion: Principles of Ideological Critique of the Bible," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 22 (1982); Sexism and God-Talk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993). 30 Asphodel, "Feminism and Spirituality: A Rewview of Recent Publications 1975–1981."; In a Chariot Drawn by Lions: The Search for the Female in Divinity: Exploring the Great Myth That God Is Male (Freedom, CA: Crossing/Women's Press Ltd, 1992). 31 Christ, "Whatever Happened to Goddess and God-She? Why Do Jews and Christians Still Pray to a Male God?." 32 China Galland, Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, a Ten Year Journey in Search of the Feminine Face of God (London, UK: Century, 1990), 14.

33 Mary Ann Beavis, "Christian Goddess Spirituality and Thealogy," Feminist Theology 24, no. 2 (2015). Carol P. Christ, "Cutting Edges: The Last Dualism, Life and Death in Goddess Feminist Thealogy," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27, no. 1 (2011): 133. 34 Deryn Guest, "Because They're Worth It! Making Room for Female Students and Thealogy in Higher Education Contexts," Feminist Theology 17, no. 1 (2008). 35 Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Luce Irigaray and Margaret Whitford, The Irigaray Reader (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991); Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Sexes and Genealogies (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993); Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution (New York: Routledge, 1994).

40 Chapter 2: Embodiment–A Haptic Methodology

When we raise Her, we raise ourselves; When we raise ourselves, we raise Her. —Asphodel P. Long

Using my woman’s body as a holistic artefact to offer up alternative visions for a feminist future has been one of the driving forces behind creating the work in this PhD research. By using my body as a research tool to travel towards, experience, and then shift to alternative, reverent terrains for women and artist residencies my body became a sensual agency, exploring the affirmative potential of liberation and transgression that pilgrimage provides. As a finely tuned instrument and located site of resistance, I participated in a multiplicity of embodied pilgrimages to both gendered sites of reverence and artist residencies, so that throughout my three-year durational performance, I became a nomadic generator of embodied artefacts. My research engaged a sensual aesthetic form, which extended the notion of sensuality illuminated by Sara Terreault:

We are mobile creatures: mobile of mind and of body. Pilgrimage is a dynamic and imaginative body practice which means it’s a sensual practice. Concepts and language are necessary but not sufficient in the study of pilgrimage. An appeal to the senses is necessary—an aesthetic appeal.36

The success of my project relied on enacting a methodology that sourced a sensual aesthetic response to an engagement with women, perpetual pilgrimage, and the spiritual. Such a methodology would encourage a visual, spatial, temporal and motion-based approach to researching sacred-journey-making to sites indicative of God-as-Woman as affirmative action for women. Practical yet metaphysical, this methodology needed to tie together art, deity, landscape, and women. Charlene Spretnak argues that art, religion, and women are marginalised sectors within the mainstream. Furthermore, Spretnak suggests that art and religion are the only two sectors within Western–European culture that still provide relational thinking, a quality of cognisance that she describes as sexuate and specifically associated with women:

41 So these two sectors [art and religion] are considered quite marginal. Pretty far from the political economy, just as women are considered quite marginal in this system. So when the three of them converge as Women’s Spiritual Art a very powerful source of inspiration is formed for women. And this is very important for us [women] if we are working to change this culture, because the culture does regard us as secondary.37

Relational thinking as permeable and rhizomatic thus provides a foundation for the practice of exploring, witnessing, and comprehending oneself inside the unstable boundaries of the sacred; the mystery within life. Yet, despite the extensive number of sacred sites available to visit globally, my individual gesture to navigate newly revised, gendered sites of reverence was conducted within clear and concrete research parameters, and methodological and thematic goals. Guidelines were set out prior to departure and are detailed below.

The methodology of The Embodied Artefact weaves inwards and outwards, accumulating sensory experiences as well as real and imagined perceptions of place, then twines these together with memory, prior knowledge, and schemata. This allows the nomadic process and resulting exhibitions to be artefacts undertaken and created within a contextualised framework, generated by real world involvement.38 Jennifer G. Jesse argues:

Lived experience is inherently interdisciplinary. Another benefit is the growing recognition that most professional fields, most cultural phenomena, and most of real life, can only be understood through multi disciplinary study, and can only be practiced in interdisciplinary ways. This is particularly true in the social sciences where we have fields like international studies, human rights, cultural studies, environmental studies, peace studies, gender politics and race relations.39

In The Embodied Artefact, life experiences from the road were collected like relics and souvenirs found at various pilgrimage sites. These unfolding moments were then distilled into site-specific installations that are composed of fibre forms, drawings, textile design, sculpture, video art and performance artefacts. Each of these mediums is utilised as an intuitive response to the physicality of

42 each gendered site, and the internal and external temporal states that I experienced there.

Transdisciplinarity

This intentional use of multiple modes of production inspired by the data collected in and through the body while on pilgrimage allows each artefact to be situated at the intersection of various artistic disciplines. This generates a methodology that enacts a “spatial bricolage”.40 To manifest the intangible experiences of the body and mind as interrelational, I wove together multiple mediums and actions, including photographing, designing, digital printing, shooting, editing, projecting, cutting, sewing, stuffing, casting and assembling three-dimensional forms, and/or creating moving images that fill or highlight space.

This collage of fragmentary techniques mirrors one of the principles of postmodern nomadic feminism: transdisciplinarity. According to Braidotti:

Transdisciplinarity... means the crossing of disciplinary boundaries without concern for the vertical distinctions around which they have been organised. Methodologically, this style comes close to the "bricolage" defended by the structuralists and especially Levi-Strauss; it also constitutes a practice of "theft," or extensive borrowing of notions and concepts that, as Cixous puts it, are deliberately used out of context and derouted from their initial purpose. Deleuze calls this technique "deterritorialization" or the becoming-nomad of ideas.41

This transdisciplinary mélange of various methods is a deterritoralisation. 42 A blurring of boundaries that invites a cross-disciplinary future, one that mirrors the interrelation of mind and body. It is an intentional choice to merge seemingly disparate disciplines, methods and conceptual dichotomies, in much the same way as a pilgrimage enables the seen and unseen, the profane and the sacred, the known and the intangible, to meet and merge. Methodological eclecticism acknowledges the variations between disciplines yet honours the ‘cross fertilisations’ that occur when each discipline is considered complementary to 43 the other.43 This generates “various ways of dialectically relating, connecting, linking, combining, or integrating” mediums and disciplines.44 Gerard Loughline of Durham University writes:

Some imagined we would now be living in a post-disciplinary age. But the disciplines still persist; those traditions of questions and purposed wonder that let us see the world with eyes both learned and quizzical. And there are still those who work at the edges of such terrains, who wander, though determinedly in the lands between, in places that are at once familiar and disconcertingly different.45

By enacting the disconcerting variations of transdisciplinarity, my methodological approach exists at the borderlands.

Inter-, Cross- and Transdisciplinary Definitions

A dynamic meeting point of interchangeability exists in the categorisation of inter-, cross- and transdisciplinarity.46 Historically these classifying terms have and continue to be used in overlapping ways, where frontiers between these overarching methodological approaches are indistinct and ambiguous both in their application and meaning.47 However Julie Thompson Klein in ‘Typologies of Interdisciplinarity; The Boundary Work of Definition’ notes:

dismissing terminology fails to recognise its value for tracking definitions over time. Terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but patterns of consensus reveal continuities and discontinuities in theory and practice.48

Thus the potentiality for revealing unity within these often assumed to be indistinct research typologies provides impetus to define inter-, cross- and transdisciplinarity here.

Interdisciplinary research and practice can be loosely defined as the integrative use of more than one discipline in the approach to generating new knowledge. Born from a desire to overcome divisive disciplinary settings within university environs the use of interdisciplinary research methods is reflective of societal expectations and interlinked with social change.49 44 Crossdisciplinarity, whilst similar, diverges in the sense that it emphasises the co-production of knowledge by researchers, in different disciplines. This is in contrast to interdisicplinarity where a researcher draws primarily from previously existing knowledge created within an alternate university department. Specifically crossdisciplinarity occurs when two or more researchers from different disciplines collaborate. One or more researchers may be an external stakeholder, such as industry player outside of academia.50

In extension transdisciplinarity can be seen as a mode of research which transcends disciplinary boundaries.51 Overcoming homogenisation transdisciplinarity promotes one-of-a-kind hybrid collaborations where knowledge is unified between peoples of various disciplines both within and without academia.52 Transdisciplinary research avoids classification as each collaboration uniquely takes into account social justice and equity issues respective of each person in the collaboration and their response to changing academic structures, environmental concerns, post/structuralism, and contemporary feminist theory. For this reason three key terms identified with transdisciplinarity are “transcendence, problem solving, and transgression.”53 Collaborators seek to create unique unified ways of responding to researching questions.

The intersection of inter-, cross- and transdisciplinary typologies is representative of the blurring of demarcations. These hazy orientations in research actively support my itinerary of pilgrimage (where the fusion of ordinary and sacred landscapes meet) and the integration of creative outcomes with performative research as a form of new knowledge creation.

Haptic Intermaterial Exchange

Fringe-dwelling places of intermaterial exchange situated between and across distinct disciplinary boundaries, enabling a bringing together of research foci, practice and theory from different areas. In my work, research from Feminist,

45 Gender and Future Studies, cross pollinates and intermingles with theory, ideas and artefacts from Fine Art and Art History. Information gleaned from Religion and the Classics, Psychology, and Literature informs a sense of place, and deepens an awareness of the sacred, while spatial understandings and gendered geographical notions are enhanced through research into the fields of Geography and Archaeology. As Jacqueline Taylor articulates:

This approach opens up a spatiality comprising of a multiplicity of mobile and heterogeneous spaces within/between the theory/practice relation in which one must continuously negotiate one’s position in order for meaning to be made. This approach is not a fixed or universal set of prescribed methods, but is performative and reflexive and accounts for the unruliness of practice and the becoming of ideas. Indeed, practice is not linear, but a constant interweaving of multiple ideas; where ideas are made up of layers of meaning which are constantly changing and transforming.54

Visualising bodies in motion within a gendered terrain, with its feminised cartography for the God-as-She, involves an unruliness of practice and a constructive interweaving of disparate elements that find meaning through reflection.55 Jennifer G. Jesse argues that in order to generate a competent and coherent vision for a research practice, researchers must become adept at initiating self-reflective awareness.56 Transdisciplinary research is associated with the cognitive actions of introspection, problem solving skills, and reflecting on the freedom to move between and within disciplines while simultaneously redefining them in order to generate new knowledge.57 Interestingly, these transposable skills are associated with the ability to successfully undertake pilgrimage and nomadism.58

With this astute focus on the process and development of a transdisciplinary methodological approach which affirms the lived experience of sexuate difference as woman, I began to search for sites that expressed the sacred as relational. In order to locate potential sites, I referenced the locations sought out by feminist theorists, thinkers and artists of second-wave feminism, women who went in search of a feminine sacrality. These women identified a multitude of

46 female deities around the world that were not part of the common religious and spiritual vernacular at the time.59

Early second wave feminists who wished to develop a new symbolic expression of Goddess in the 1960s and 1970s', such as Carol P. Christ and Mary Beth Edelson, travelled to these sites, recording their experiences through art forms, narrative and theory. These women created a ground breaking genre of visionary literature in both the popular and academic realms.60 Audrey Flack’s work exemplifies how a new research materiality emerged for artists as a result of their feminist use of symbols of God-as-Woman (figures 6 and 7).61 Through these artists’ responses to new understandings of God-as-Woman, art production became a form of conceptualising new links between the God-as-She, cycles of women's bodies, rituals, and the Earth as signifiers of power and empowerment.62

Searching academic databases, women’s studies reading lists, and online forums, I amassed a litany of books and articles that explored understandings of woman and the sacred, each one suggesting possible locations to visit and experience as either archaeological site or place of pilgrimage. Adding to this, I asked questions and listened intently for the naming of sites in discussions with colleagues and peers. Principal texts were identified, such as Carol P. Christ’s Odyssey with the Goddess about women who had gone in search of revered sites, whether they be cave, temple, water source, Neolithic site, and/or church. I formulated a list of newly revised gendered sites of reverence, which had been identified and negotiated by the pioneering thealogical artists and writers. ‘Thealogy” which was defined in the Introduction, has a respective literary canon and it is from this discourse of God-as-She that I sourced site locations.63

Figure 6 Audrey Flack, American Athena 1989, patinated bronze with gilded ornament, 95.88 cm high. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 7 Audrey Flack, Egyptian Rocket Goddess 1990, patinated bronze. 106.68cm high. Photo courtesy the artist.

48 Karen Tate’s 108 Sacred Places of Goddess (2006) exemplifies the act of locating and naming gendered terrains of reverence.64 However, Tate’s book may be aligned with the genre of the field guide or what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari refer to as the “rootbook”.65 This is a book that represents a subjective worldview representative of the author, and thus can never be truly replicated; as Jac Saora writes of such a work, “it does not imitate nor can it truly be imitated”.66 Thus, the journeys written about by these women are not replicas of the landscape or the site itself, nor can they be mimicked. In this way, while I journeyed to sacred locales written about through means of personal narrative and perhaps visited by my foremothers, I did not seek to emulate their posited experiences but rather to journey as an iteration, an empowered agency, and as a memorial, in order to glean my own impression through the lens of a nomadic interdisciplinary artistic practice. Spretnak notes:

This combination “women spiritual art” is really our mana. Whether it is historical images, figurines from the Neolithic era, prehistoric or even back to the Upper Paleolithic, it reminds us, we are in a lineage: A long line of people who honoured the sacred female and then with regard to contemporary artists; painting, sculpture, women’s installation art, music, contemporary arts, dance. All of these are sources of protected conversion of relational thinking, which is otherwise unavailable in [this] culture.67

Many of Mary Curtis Ratcliff’s and Nancy Spero’s artefacts exemplify the combination of ‘women spiritual art’ (figures 8 and 9). Both artists worked with symbolic imagery of God-as-She excavated from archaeological sites, uncovered—in the sense that respective artifacts were made publically accessible—by thealogical authors, where God-as-Woman could be palpably experienced and translated into their own visual language to express holistic understandings of sacred woman in place. Ratcliff’s Danuta in Malta and Danuta Looking (both 2002, figures 10 and 11) speak to the process of immersion into sites of becoming. In the former, Ratcliff has her back turned; in the latter, she is facing forward but her gaze is looking away from the viewer. These postures of removal reflect the idea of a transition between realms—of leaving the culturally coded normative experience of the sacred behind, and entering into a new way of

49 being. This is made possible through the primal transformative energy of the site associated with the fluid ever-changing nature of God-as-Woman that was beginning to emerge.

The large volume of sites identified through this investigative research phase meant that I needed to refine them and identify those that could be accessible and manageable within the confines of the PhD timeframe. This required reflexivity coupled with an intuitive process.

The Motherline

Upon reflection, it was apparent that the way to evaluate which sites to visit would be based upon the experience of my relational female body: a body evoking a generative “cosmological unfolding” in which the process of birth, life and death interconnects all women.68 The clearest example of this, as Carol P. Christ points out, is the female form as a "direct incarnation” of a birthing process, which allows women to trace back through daughter to mother a direct route to the origin of an archetype of creation. Naomi Lowinsky called this concept the “Motherline”:

In more detail the “Motherline” provides the ability to investigate the legacy that is unconsciously, culturally, biologically and historically passed from great grandmother to grandmother, mother, to daughter and onwards to great granddaughter. It is an unbroken line of information that carries stories of women’s cultural heritage, bodies and bodily images. By being able to discuss, share and research these “Motherline” stories healing can occur, as women of the same family line come to realise the full potential of their bodies and the archetypal imagery of the feminine that exists between them.69

Figure 8 Nancy Spero, Notes In Time On Woman (panel eight) 1979, handprinting, gouache, typewriting, collage on paper, 1 of 24 panels, 51 x 6398cm. Image courtesy The Estate of Nancy Spero.

Figure 9 Nancy Spero, The First Language 1981 (Panel 8), handprinted and painted paper and handprinting on paper, 22 panels, 50.8 x 190 feet. Image courtesy The Estate of Nancy Spero.

51 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 10 Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Danuta in Malta 2002, artwork on photograph, pigmented inkjet print. 60.96 x 66.04cm.

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 11 Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Danuta Looking 2002, artwork on photograph, pigmented inkjet print. 91.44 x 55.88cm. 52 If an acknowledgement of the ancestral line of the birthing process exists, then this process and aspect of creation is based on sexuate and gender difference, ideas explored in Meinrad Craighead’s spiritual painting Mother Daughter (1981, figure 12) and Sonya Yong James’ fibre forms in Mother and Child (2009, figure 13). Artist Eulalia Valldosera “question[s] the conventional representation of women and, hence, recuperate[s] areas of femininity that were vanishing within a male-dominated world of work.”70 In her photographic artefact Maternal Bond (2012, figure 14), which is part of the Family Ties II no. 1 series, Valldosera choreographs and positions mother and children into a shadow image of a Stegosaurus. She evokes the bond between time and the generative potential associated with women, inviting the viewer to consider the internal potency of woman not as an isolated experience but one that occurs throughout time over long generations. This process of examining the Motherline through graduations of grey marks is a distinct feature in this series, where the focus—while on family constellations and the way relationships are interlinked—ultimately diverges from family roles to the bond/link of the maternal. Thus, Valldosera focuses on “the potential of relationship to create the potential of a different future”, a feminist future.71

In parallel, Sally Smart works with configurations of collected objects, cut-outs, painted felt, and canvas. Through the phenomenological processes of collecting, clustering and reassembling objects, artefacts and feminist theory, Smart anthropomorphises the landscape, allowing family lineage to be connected to the natural world, as represented in Family Tree House (1999–2002, figure 15).72 Janet McKenzie in interview with Sally Smart demystifies the conceptual framework of Family Tree House:

The complex installation assemblages [of Sally Smart] explore the literal and psychological representations of a personal and social family tree. The tree/house is used as a model representing interior and exterior space simultaneously, and engaging with ideas around this family tree/tree of knowledge/tree of life idea … It was a work also commenting on the space of women and their representation in the Australian art landscape, often inside the garden fence, on the veranda/porch.73

53 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 12 Meinrad Craighead, Mother and Daughter 1981, oil painting, dimensions unknown.

Figure 13 Sonya Yong James, Mother and Child 2009, diptych, various types of wool felt, 69 x 125 x 4cm. Photo courtesy the artist. 54 Figure 14 Eulalia Valldosera, Maternal Bond (Family Ties II no.1) 2012, print on barite paper, 6mm forex, aluminum frame, 111 x 163.2cm. Photo courtesy the artist and Carroll /. Fletcher.

Figure 15 Sally Smart, Family Tree House (Femmage, Shadows and Symptoms) 1999–2002, synthetic polymer paint on felt and fabric with collage elements, size variable (10 x12m approximately). Collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Photo courtesy the artist.

55 Like Valldosera, Smart links an external and internal understanding of the corporeal with that of situated context in Family Tree House. Landscape, anatomy, dwelling places, furniture, and garments are all identified, gathered, and assembled into one installation. In discussing her artistic process of synthesising multiple art mediums together Smart notes:

Inevitably the conclusion is like a puzzle-picture: a maze of fugitive parts; landscape parts become human parts: but whether the lines, shapes and colours appear abstract or representational there is an assemblage of parts. However, the composition is unstable, a chimera: the picture is impaired.74

Here the body and the capacity of women's bodies are not presented as absolute, yet, through affirmation of their relational nature, women’s understanding of self can begin to be healed. This is demonstrated in Lorraine O’Grady’s photographic montage, Cross Generational (1980–94, figure 16), a diptych that explores an affirmation that sees women as being different from, yet equal to, men. Braidotti disentangles this difference when she states:

To put it in more feminist terms, the problem is also how to free "woman" from the subjugated position of annexed "other," so as to make her expressive of a different difference, of pure difference, of an entirely new plane of becoming, out of which differences can multiply and differ from each other.75

By considering the pure difference that exists through the sexuate lineage of my familial line, I can authentically explore the subtle similarities and variances that occur between my contemporary female body and those of my ancestors. Thus, calling for depictions of God-as-Woman accentuates distinctions between men and woman. Yet, it also embraces the ambiguity of what the contemporary female body looks and feels like. Here a larger awareness is at play where the

56 Figure 16 Lorraine O'Grady, Cross Generational 1980-1994, cibachrome diptych one of 16 in the series Miscegenated Family Album. Image courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York. © 2017 Lorraine O’Grady.

57 contemporary woman’s body is no longer that of a form idealised from the romanticised past (be it Minoan, Neolithic, and/or matriarchal communities). Nor is it a body that exists as a dualism with the male body.76 The contemporary female body is a site of becoming, of multiple identities, and of multiple shapes. The female body exists in an ever-evolving world and as such it too is ever changing. As I moved between sites my body is not fixed nor static, but rather morphing and changing as it witnesses and experiences altered states of consciousness in gendered terrains associated with the act of reverence of female sacrality, and the generative potential it represents.

With this in mind, I created a list of sites in accordance with the Motherline, locating sites within the range of places that my foremothers may have dwelled in and/or visited as well as the deities they may have worshipped. As an Australian Italian, I have ancestors of mixed ethnicities, speaking multiple languages and with foremothers who have links to Scottish and French relatives. Acknowledging the rhizomatic nature of my matrilineal heritage is a way of moving through and within place.

As with the general erasure of women from history, so too is there little archival documentation of my Motherline. I am dependent on stories and insinuations most of which were suppressed after the trauma of World War Two, with many stories no longer discussed within my family. Hence, the Motherline in my lineage is a personal paradox and while not torn, it is fragmented. Each pilgrimage site visited thus becomes a sliver of remembrance, a performance of memory, and a repetitive memorial action developed to enhance understandings of the God-as-She within the matrix of my matrilineal history. Throughout this long durational performance, I honoured and tapped into the experiences that my foremothers and those close to them may have had in these very sites, separated only by the passing of time.

Therefore, I selected Mediterranean, Scottish, French, and Canadian sites that are related to my ancestral Motherline and that also encompass collisions, slippages

58 and overlaps in understandings and depictions of God-as-Woman. I realised that I am “embedded in a matrix of interdependent relationships”,77 embodying a web of symbiotic relationships that exists within my cellular makeup. In short, the dormant and active aspects of my inherited genes inflect my pilgrimage travels. This allows a generative lineal web not just of myself as a singular, isolated, independent identity but rather as a cohesive, but interconnected mutable being reflected in the seen and invisible aspects of my physicality and interiority. My body as site of practice expands the theoretical understanding of empowered agency through spirituality, women, and art within the sites themselves. When arriving at a sacred site of reverence, I became acutely aware of how I felt in situ, alternately experiencing a sense of familiarity, unease, distaste, welcoming, and/or sense of coming home. The complexity of the complementary intertwining of my contemporary understanding and the generic traits I have inherited from my foremothers becomes intermingled with another similarly complex web. The entangled relationships between the guardian/s of the site, tourist, and pilgrim; seeker and cynic; interfaith practitioners and adherents to one faith who all meet together in a mélange of responsive experience. These varied enactments prompt questions about appropriation, authenticity, liminal space, and the ethical use of sites.

While these concepts of meeting and enactment will be explored in further detail in the following chapter, what is important to note here in relation to methodology is that by using my Motherline as a way of creating a definitive strategy for which sites to visit, I addressed ways in which to inhabit feminised sacred spaces that respect the tradition and culture of those spaces.

Ethical standards set through an adherence to the Motherline thus became a framework for “how best to learn from other religious traditions without using their language and practices in ways which are insulting or harmful”.78 Using the Motherline as a guide, I reviewed the burgeoning list of sacred women’s spaces, reducing the number of potential sacred terrains to witness and experience down to a smaller specific set of negotiable and accessible sites.

59 Performative Spaces

Once I had negotiated this boundary, I then considered how to make space for newly emerging literature and/or receiving word-of-mouth recommendations that would occur once the performance began. I decided to activate the same lens for receiving information about newly revealed sites, allowing an intuitive and synchronistic element to infuse the research project. This element of chance enabled me to respond and relate to the persons I met at sites with openness. In short, the identification of the Motherline as a parameter influenced preparation for travel, selection of the sites and became a guide for entering into the sites themselves in a respectful way.

The sites I visited are as follows:

Amorgos, Greece Brauron, Greece Delphi, Greece Minoan archaeological sites of Crete, Greece Neolithic Fertility site at Athens, Greece Santorini, Greece Fountain of Youth, Florida, USA Pilgrimage to stand-alone historical women figures in Philadelphia, USA Baume, France Chartres, France Diana temple at Nimes, France Le Puy en Velay, France Rocamadour, France Santa Maries de la Mer, France Avebury, England Glastonbury, England Uffington White Horse Hill, England Island of the Women, off the coast of Iona, Scotland Megaliths and standing stones of Orkney, Scotland Sheila Na Gig site on Iona, Scotland Venus Mound, Highlands of Scotland Cartargo, Costa Rica Rose Quartz Mountain at Banff, Canada

Once a site was selected, I travelled to it, experienced, documented, and reflected on it before moving on to the next site of reverence. 60 By travelling to both rural and urban locales considered to be alternative and newly revised gendered sites of reverence, the physiological exterior of my body doubled with the psychical experience within, becoming the principal medium for art making and inquiry.79 A bridge was created between rigorous observation and the choreographic, ritualised process of extended pilgrimage in motion. Articulating the corporeal responsiveness and interior impressions I embody at and between sites is central to the performance-led practice I enacted. While travelling towards, experiencing, and moving away from the carefully selected sites of devotional empowerment for women, my body became like a finely tuned instrument—a terminal through which explorations of imagination, memory, cognitive and sensorial understandings of gendered landscapes are filtered and structured into multilayered works.

Hence, my body became a research object, one that is inherently part of the artwork.80 Subsuming the body within art practice reflects a tradition whereby the human body is viewed as a cultural object that always has and is a performing subject, a public corporeal topography.81 Markus Hallensleben discusses the use of the body as performative space:

We can use our bodies (or parts of them) as tools, and at the same time we can be the tool that allows living, acting, interacting, creating life and producing spaces, creating ideologies and rituals, producing ideas and material realms, figural topics and urban topographies (cf. Lefebvre). It is exactly this ambivalence of being and having a body that allows for understanding the human body as performative space.82

Existing in a state of perpetual motion between, within, and at the sacred sites, I began to interpolate between thematic ideas around deity, landscape and woman’s body. I considered the implications of submerging my body into the aesthetics of my chosen sacred landscapes utilised by women today, while increasing my awareness and attention on the body and its cellular structure to see if it had its own language and instinct for experiencing the sacred. By moving between sites of making and creating through artist residences as well as visiting gendered landscapes of reverence, I placed myself in a process of deep and

61 authentic inquiry into the relationship between women, spirituality and art in its contemporary expressions. I participated in the enactment of multilayered conceptual theory through the contrast of familiarity of personal routine prominent in artist residencies and the sublime unknown.83 I was interested to see if through this process, the multiplicity of pilgrimages in which I became a nomad, my body would infuse and assimilate “the body of sacral presence”.84

Knowledge production throughout this PhD project incorporated an acknowledgment and articulation of body positions and gestures of devotion that could be specifically associated with myself and other women at these sites. I incorporated knowledge of the body of woman s as a source and conduit of reference. I sought to merge my corporeal awareness of a woman’s body (both of myself and others) with text and image.85

In this way, I became the first audience to my research as I reflected in situ on the performance I enacted; emphasising experience and awareness of relational and responsive states as a form of presence, epitomised and encouraged by the ground-breaking work of 1960s and 70s ecofeminists and thealogians.86 My conscious awareness transferred between investigative research processes and the performativity of moving into and beyond the sacred,87 highlighted by my reflections as recipient of the inward gaze and as first viewer.

Beyond the mobile parameters of my body, the image/aesthetics of the site itself as well as the forms found within it influenced the new works developed at each residency as well as the durational performance in its totality. Specifically, at each revered terrain, I scanned the architecture (whether it be organic or constructed space) and its decoration (such as textiles, candles, figurines, votive offerings, sculptures and/or paintings) to see if there existed a common thread or generalised aesthetics of art at the pilgrim sites. Interestingly, this way of observing also includes ways in which women at these sites enact fashion and adornment trends while paying homage or bearing witness. The observation of colours, styles, textures and commonalities in dress ultimately became memories

62 and research notes that informed the shape and choice of materials in the culminating exhibition. Architecture, interior and exterior embellishment, personal adornment all swirled together as an evocative aesthetic research process for understanding my experience within gendered sites of reverence.

The openness and spaciousness afforded by this research practice became a critical and creative developmental tool, not aimed at any definitive or predetermined outcome but instead a means through which to explore multi- sensory understandings and to address the efficacy of cross-disciplinary methodologies and the theoretical concepts that underpin them.88 Existing within an ever-shifting landscape of the God-as-She, time became abstract. The practice of pilgrimage was not just a concept but also subjectivity dependent on a body moving in and through space and time. Similarly Jennifer G. Jesse argues:

The nature of a discipline can be redefined through critical questioning as well as the effects of time. Disciplines thus become housed within unstable boundaries shaped by processes of reflection and time.89

In one way, my process of extended performance drew on post-performance reflection as outlined by Brenda Downing in Ways of Coming to Knowing through Embodied Methodologies.90 Downing defines her fine art research as employing a body-focused methodology that she divides into two aspects: writing-as-inquiry and performance-making-as-inquiry. In my PhD work, I glean ideas from Downing’s research but emphasise holism. Through the use of embodiment within a set and defined series of thematic terrains, writing and research are not at odds with ritualised artefacts, ceremonial performance, and/or the sacred nomadism I enact. Writing-as-inquiry and performance-making-as-inquiry are conjoined: each aspect of inquiry fuels and provides impetus and stimulation for the act of creation.

63 Performance-led Practice as Research

The three-year performance I enacted through this project emphasised a holistic framework by complexly fusing periods of reading, writing and making while on pilgrimage. Oscillating continuously throughout the journey allowed multiple facets of research to meld and dissolve together, so that they were no longer seen as dualistic and conflicting. For instance, at the place where paper and thread meet, the folds of the books I read echo the folds of fabric I stitched together.

As Suze Adams states; “Practice-led research, as I understand it, constitutes the active exploration of critical concepts in practice: a process that draws on phenomenological experience as well as conceptual understanding, a process continually open to question, re-negotiation, re-interpretation and ultimately representation.”91

This concept is explored by Ann Hamilton in habitus at the Fabric Workshop Philadelphia, USA, in 2016, where she investigated the tactile exchange between text, textile, and image (Near Away, figure 17, 2013).92 The production of artistic creation here is embodied and fused, presenting research, practice and performance not as spectral but as interconnected and highly responsive. 93 Jacqueline Taylor notes:

The theory and practice relation has historically been seen as oppositional whereby ‘theory’ and text have been privileged as more valid and rigorous in articulating and constituting knowledge than ‘practice’.94

Moreover, in order to avoid the conventional dichotomies of body and mind, intuition and intellect, sensation and reason at play in academia, I drew on feminist thealogical research, which has identified binary oppositions inherent in the patriarchal concepts in voicing and writing the sacred, but also affirmed the use of personal experience, reflection, bodily sensation and lived experience as a way to overcome this. Jacqueline Taylor discusses the way dichotomies overlay and merge in her practice:

64 Figure 17 Ann Hamilton, Near Away 2013, paperback book slices, cheesecloth, string, bookbinder's glue, methyl cellulose, steel wire, newsprint, abaca paper, kraft paper, 62.23 x 50.8 x 11.43cm. Photo courtesy the artist and Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

65 My written work is presented in the form of an on-going exchange between self and world, practice and theory (as are my installation works)—a process informed by corporeal as well as conceptual understandings and performed via text and image.95

Theorists such as Yve Lomax, Barbara Bolt, Estelle Barrett, Hazel Smith and Roger Dean, Lin Holdridge, and Katy Macleod translate and investigate the complex dichotomy that exists between theory and practice.96 They acknowledge a divide that privileges theory over creative modes of expression, or inversely, practice over theory. This conceptual ideal of a seesaw, which is considered to promote a dynamic oppositional power play, is at odds with the methodology I adopt here.

Recognised scholars such as Mary Daly, Carol P. Christ, and Emma Trout revealed a bias in the repertoire of the sacred as early as 1971.97 They noted that the discourse of the sacred divided men and women, body and mind, intuition and reason, feeling and logic. One was pitted against another in a hierarchical fashion, so that the masculine was considered sacred while that which was considered other, “the feminine,” was considered unclean.98 An exemplar of the volatile iconography relating to the symbolic and figurative representation of women and the sacred can readily be see in Faith Wilding’s Sacrifice (1971, figure 18), Erika Hoffmann’s artefact Paradise and the Fall (2013, figure 19), and Kiki Smith’s Women on Pyres (2002, figure 20). The male aspect was to be worshipped and that which was other reviled and avoided. This process of contrast saw sexual differences as conflicting rather than as complementary and working together to create a healthy functioning whole.

In the holistic view, the body and mind are not conceived as binary oppositions, or separate sources of data collection. Instead, they are seen as interconnected, interwoven, and relational. 99 These ideas of deconstructing oppositional forces to highlight their complementary nature are examined by Elizabeth Grosz in her metaphorical use of the möbius band to deconstruct binary oppositions and associated hierarchies of mind and body, inside and outside, culture and

66 Figure 18 Faith Wilding, Sacrifice 1971, room-size installation at the Feminist Art Program studio in Fresno, CA, cast life-size figure, cow guts and blood, dead bird, kotex, plastic flowers, candles. Participants were invited to light candles on the altar. Photo courtesy the artist.

67 Figure 19 Erika Hoffmann, Paradise and the Fall 2013, image panel, dimensions variable as part of a larger-scale multi-panelled installation. Photo courtesy Sammlung Hoffmann, Berlin.

68 Figure 20 Kiki Smith, Pyre Woman Kneeling, Pyre Woman on Haunches, Pyre Woman with Knees Extended 2002, bronze and wood, 142.2 x 149.9 x 72.4cm per woman.

69 biology,100 or what Steve Pile refers to as “form and formlessness, or internal and external”.101 Using the möbius strip as a non-hierarchical and non-dualistic model, Grosz demonstrates how this topographical puzzle allows for the inside of the strip to be revealed on the external, and the outside to exist within. This is made possible through its form whereby a flat ribbon is twisted once before the ends are sealed together to create a circuitous band. Grosz emancipates oppositions through the use of a metaphor and a scientific model, bringing together the poetic and the mathematical.

Artist Hayv Kahraman uses the concept of the möbius strip to reflect on the between space that women inhabit after an uprooting. They experience a continuous dislocationary non-orientated state generated by the impact of migration, diasporas, emergency and travel. Seeing the body and mind as perpetually moving between sites of leaving and arriving, Kahraman reflects on the use of the body both as vehicle and vessel:

I reject the Cartesian dualistic philosophy of mind/body. The body is never simply just a physical object, but rather contingent on social, cultural and economic attributes and an embodiment of consciousness. To perceive the world is to reflect on possible actions of my body on the world. I both have and am a body, hence the body is socially formed. I also feel that our bodies are vehicles for understanding our very being. An ontological investigation through our bodies is something that I find very intriguing. We are, after all, inhabitants of our bodies and perhaps the space we understand the most is/should be our body. It is an organism that not only pertains to me, but one which also defines me.102

Working with animal skin and scans of her body using a 3D digital scanner designed for documenting archaeological sites, Kahraman creates “ultra feminine forms woven into the work [möbius strip, which] can blur boundaries of dichotomous thoughts such as masculine/feminine, mind/body and public/private” (e.g., Mobius Body for Extimacy, 2012, figure 21 and DisEmbodied.8., 2012, figure 22).103 Interestingly, the infinite form, which the möbius band represents, aligns with the experience of the nomad. The purposeful wanderer participates in a cyclical pattern of movement,

70 continuously shifting from one destination to the next against a blurred horizon, an active position that will be discussed at length in the next chapter.104

Like the möbius strip, I went from inside the sacred dwelling to the outside, returning to residencies; communities of artists set up as positive sites of creativity and becoming. Travelling to and arriving at a residency can be likened to a pilgrimage and as such is a form of nomadic existence. After arriving at a residency location, a period of making, thinking, reflecting and exhibiting begins. The cycle of residencies creates fluctuating states in which I am enmeshed. The outcome of this moving between points allows all my experiences to accumulate towards one creative goal or one transformational state of being.

Multiple connections between locations may appear to be disconnected or discordant experiences, yet, when layered one over the other, they support a form of political agency and a particular motivation for being in the world, which is in accordance with Braidotti’s ‘nomadic subjects’.105

Nomadic Feminism

Using Braidotti's postmodern nomadic feminism as a frame, I moved like a shuttle, translocating towards and between restorative sites of the sacred for women. In this way, my body participated in a ritualised concentration of nomadic geography in action. Travelling between residencies and sacred sites, I existed in a transitory state, in the world and of it. Each holy woman’s place visited acted as a pivotal marker on my journeys/pilgrimages. Houston Baker and Charlotte Pierce-Baker suggest "[i]n order to comprehend the transient nature of all wholes, one must first become accustomed to living and working with fragments".106 While Baker and Pierce-Baker refer specifically to the act of accumulating materials for quilt-making (that comprise once-worn items, found and discarded materials, hand-me-downs and treasure hunt finds), they also draw symbolic reference to the way one's life is lived as a connection between

71 Figure 21 Hayv Kahraman, Mobius Body for Extimacy 2012, installation and detailed view. Photo courtesy artist and The Third Line Gallery, Dubai.

Figure 22 Hayv Kahraman, DisEmbodied.8. 2012, oil on panel with rawhide insert, 121.92 x 187.96cm. Photo courtesy artist and The Third Line Gallery, Dubai.

72 fragmented experiences that come together to make a whole. As Gertrude Stein has noted; “It's great to have roots, as long as you can take them with you.”107

Moving between fragmented experiences thus became an action related to nomadism, where the totality of movement between places creates the whole cloth, in the same way as stitching pattern pieces together creates the fabric. Braidotti puts forward the proposition that the existence between and in diverse places is not a passive position:

…the figure of the nomad, as opposed to the exile, allows us to think of international dispersion and dissemination of ideas not only on the banal and hegemonic model of the tourist or traveller but also as forms of resistance, as ways of pre-serving ideas that may otherwise have been condemned to wilful obliteration or to collectively produced amnesia.108

In this way, my movement between gendered sacred sites invites a remembering, or an ‘iteration’.109 In the process of continuation between sites, I become accustomed to a lore and/or unspoken code of behaviour that comes about through the familiarity of existing between and within fragments but also between the act of pilgrimage and the site itself. Each time I enter and depart a site, I revisit the process of touching the sacred in animate finite form before returning to a wider framework. I become one with my performance led research whereby I iterate between research and experience, remembering, coding, understanding, experiencing and beginning anew. I interweave and sew together separate fragments so that they become whole, but in each heightened and intensified experience of the sacred in its identifiable listed form and shape, I reconnect with the performance methodology inherent in contemporary art research. I ebb and flow within the web of the performance cycle. Research and performance are no longer separated but conjoined through the process of nomadism, which heals the fragmented whole.

More than that, in revisiting the pioneering efforts of thealogians from the early 1960s onwards, I invite a re-emergence of discussions of the role of woman, the sacred and art and in academic discourse. The driving force of this research

73 project in action is not the pangs of nostalgia but rather a way of exploring ritualised choreography of creative motion towards the sacred and women’s art as affirmative.

Variations of personal experience become ineffable and visceral source material for this PhD research project situated at the meeting points of contemporary thealogical inquiry and art practice. I enact pilgrimage, so that I can embody it. The process of nomadic, embodied lived experience within the sacred becomes performance. The performance becomes source material (research) for reflective exhibitions that are inherently based on the production of knowledge through experience. The experience is mystical, enchanting, otherworldly and outside of spatial and temporal norms. Artefacts created from my experience of gendered pilgrimage invite the viewer to learn from and be responsive to their own experience of God-as-Woman. This enables the enchanting of academia and contemporary art practice in new liberational ways.

My project becomes a transgressive act that questions the removal of particular themes, such as spirituality and faith, from recognised and validated art practice since the inception of MOMA in New York in the 1930s.110 The performance becomes a multifaceted memorial and provocation inviting reflection on the possible aversion to spirituality in contemporary art. This was a returning, reweaving and research iteration—a repetitive process pivotal in shaping this research project on the move.

Performing sequential pilgrimages to various gendered terrains allowed me to embody a reflective and analytical research process complemented with, by, and as art. Through this research process, I could examine the relationship of body and mind as affirmative but also as a source of data production for the creation of new works. This overlapping and interrelated transfer of knowledge is described by Grosz:

74 The inflection of the mind into body and body into mind… [Shows] not their fundamental identity or reducibility but the torsion of the one into the other, the passage, vector, or uncontrollable drift of the inside into the outside and the outside into the inside.111

In a similar fashion, exterior and interior impressions and expressions drift seamlessly one between the other, just as memories of movements in and between locales of reverence, merge and blend. These double sensations (physical and psychical) in carefully selected terrains of gender-based devotion are the source of knowledge production for this exegesis. In sum, my physicality and my mind blend together to become a singular vessel for data-collection and production. This process informs the creations of artefacts in a stand-alone long- durational performance and as a series of supporting exhibitions that reflect women, spirituality, and art.

75 36 Sara Terreault, "The Thousand-Word Picture: Teaching Pilgrimage through Images " in 5th Annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies 2016 (Williamsburg, VA: College of William & Mary, 2016). 37 Charlene Spretnak, "Women's Spiritual Art as a Source of Female Sustenance," in Parliament of the World's Religions (Salt Lake City: Parliament of the World's Religions, 2015). 38 Marilee Sprenger, Teaching the Critical Vocabulary of the Common Core : 55 Words That Make or Break Student Understanding (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD), 2013), 7. 39 Jennifer G. Jesse, "Reflections on the Benefits and Risks of Interdisciplinary Study in Theology, Philosophy, and Literature," American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 32, no. 1 (2011): 67 40 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 41 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 36. 42 Mark C. Taylor, "End the University as We Know It," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html. 43 Adams, "Practice as Research: A Fine Art Contextual Study," Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 13, no. 3 (2014): 223. 44 Jesse, "Reflections on the Benefits and Risks of Interdisciplinary Study," 65. 45 Heather Walton, Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), ii. 46 Bernard C. K. Choi and Anita W. P. Pak, “Multidisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity in Health Research, Services, Education and Policy: 1. Definitions, Objectives, and Evidence of Effectiveness,” Clinical and Investigative Medicine 29, no. 6 (2006): 351. 47 Leo Apostel, Guy Berger, Asa Briggs and Guy Michaud, Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities (Paris: Organisation for Educational Cooperation and Development, 1972). 48 Julie Thompson Klein, “Typologies of Interdisciplinarity; The Boundary Work of Definition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity 2nd Edition, eds. Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Roberto Carlos Dos Santos Pacheco (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 21. 49 Andrew Abbott, Chaos of Disciplines (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2001). 50 Andrew J. Hoffman and Jessica Axson, (2017). “Examining Interdisciplinary Sustainability Institutes at Major Research Universities: Innovations in Cross-Campus and Cross-Disciplinary Models,” University of Michigan Ross School of Business Working Paper Working Paper No. 1366, 1-64. 51 Choi, “Multidisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity,” 351. 52 Julie Thompson Klein, “Discourses of Transdisciplinarity: Looking Back to the Future,” Futures 63, November (2014): 12. 53 Ibid., 10. 54 Jacqueline Taylor, "From ‘or’ to ‘and’: L’e´Criture Fe´Minine as a Methodological Approach for Fine Art Research," Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 13, no. 3 (2014): 305. 55 Jesse, "Reflections on the Benefits and Risks of Interdisciplinary Study," 64. 56 Ibid., 66. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation; Goldenberg, The Changing of the Gods; Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1989); Judith Plaskow, "The Coming of Lilith: A Response," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23, no. 4 (Spring 2007); Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective; Kartikeya C. Patel, "Women, Earth, and the Goddess: A ShāKta-Hindu Interpretation of Embodied Religion," Hypatia 9, no. 4 (1994). 60 Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Hamlets Mother and Other Women (New York: Ballantine, 1991). 61 Janis Jennings, "Tending Hestia's Flame: Circumambulating the Sacred Feminine," Psychological Perspectives: A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought 51, no. 2 (2008); Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Inc, 1976); Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the 76 Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image (New York: Compass, Penguin Publishing Group, 1999). 62 Budapest, The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries; Asphodel, "Feminism and Spirituality: A Rewview of Recent Publications 1975–1981."; ibid. 63 Carol P. Christ, Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete (New York Continuum, 1995); Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row., 1987); Galland, Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, a Ten Year Journey in Search of the Feminine Face of God; Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, Travelling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France (London, UK: Viking Penguin, 2010). Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1987). 64 Karen Tate, Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations (SanFrancisco, USA: CCC Publishing, 2006). 65 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London, UK: Continuum, 1987), 5. 66 Jac Saorsa, Narrating the Catastrophe: An Artist's Dialogue with Deleuze and Ricoeur (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2011), 17. 67 Spretnak, "Women's Spiritual Art as a Source of Female Sustenance." 68 Ibid. 69 Maren Tonder Hansen, Mother Mysteries (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1997); Erica Neuman, The Great Mother (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). 70 Anon, "Eulalia Valldosera: Overview": Caroll / Fletcher, http://www.carrollfletcher.com/artists/25-eulalia-valldosera/biography/. 71 Begoña Torres and Guillermo González, Eulalia Valldosera, Oral Memories (Spain: Productora Medya Audiovisual and Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2016). 72 Cynthia Wild, "Conversation Piece: Artist Cynthia Wild Spends a Morning with Artist Sally Smart. (Dialogue)," Meanjin 62, no. 2 (June) (2003). 73 Janet McKenzie, "Sally Smart: Interview," Studio International, http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/sally-smart-interview-pedagogical-puppet- university-connecticut-australia. 74 Deborah Hart, "Tales of the Unexpected Aspects of Contemporary Australian Art: Sally Smart," http://nga.gov.au/TALES/Sally.cfm. 75 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 115. 76 Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti. 77 Christ, "Cutting Edges," 129. 78 Rhiannon Grant, "Feminists Borrowing Language and Practice from Other Religious Traditions: Some Ethical Implications," Feminist Theology 20, no. 2 (2012): 157. 79 Elizabeth A. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). 80 Markus Hallensleben, "Performative Body Spaces," in Performative Body Spaces: Corporeal Topographies in Literature, Theatre, Dance, and the Visual Arts (Amsterdam, NL: Rodopi, 2010), 9. 81 Ibid., 11. 82 Ibid., 15. 83 Adams, "Practice as Research," 218. 84 Charlene Spretnak, The Spiritual Dynamic in Moden Art: Art History Reconsidered 1800 to the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 158. 85 Adams, "Practice as Research: A Fine Art Contextual Study," 219. 86 Jantzen, Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion; Sarah L. Peters, "Ambivalent Devotion: Religious Imagination in Contemporary Southern Women's Fiction" (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2009).; Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen Seventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1997); Asphodel, "Feminism and Spirituality: A Rewview of Recent Publications 1975–1981."; ibid.; Juliet Blair, "Women's Self Concept and Belief: A Feminist Approach to Empowerment Symbolism," Women's

77 Studies International Forum .8, no. 4 (1985); Carolyn Merchant, "Peace With the Earth: Women and the Environmental Movement in Sweden," Women's Studies International Forum 9, no. 5 (1986); Charlotta Hensley, "'Womanspirit' and Other Issues of Feminist Spirituality," Newsstand Magazines (Spring 1987); Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen Seventy; Melissa Raphael, "Feminism, Constructivism and Numinous Experience," Religious Studies 30, no. 4 (1994); Irigaray, In the Beginning She Was. 87 Taylor, "From ‘or’ to ‘and’," 305. 88 Suze Adams, "Practice as Research," ibid.: 218. 89 Jesse, "Reflections on the Benefits and Risks of Interdisciplinary Study," 68 90 Brenda Downing, "Ways of Coming to Knowing through Embodied Methodologies," Outskirts Online Journal 32, no. May (2015). 91 Adams, "Practice as Research," 218. 92 Anne Hamilton, "Cloth · a Commonplace," Tumblr, http://cloth-a-commonplace.tumblr.com. 93 Taylor, "From ‘or’ to ‘and’," 305. 94 Ibid., 303. 95 cited in Adams, “Practice as Research”, 219. 96 Yve Lomax, Passionate Being: Language, Singulatiry and Perserverance (London, UK: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2010). Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean, "Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice: Towards the Iterative Cyclic Web," in Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts (Research Methods for the Arts and Humanities) 1st ed, ed. Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Estelle J. Barrett, "Situating Creative Arts Research as 'Successor Science'," in Doctoral Writing in the Creative and Performing Arts, ed. Louise Ravelli, Brian Paltridge, and Sue Starfield (Oxfordshire, UK: Libri Publishing, 2014). Katy Macleod and Lin Holdridge, Thinking through Art: Reflections on Art as Research (New York: Routledge, 2006). Barbara Bolt, "A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?," Working Papers in Art and Design , no. 5 Research into Practice Conference (2008). 97 Christ and Trout, "Alternative Images of God: Communal Theology Conference of Women Theologians."; Daly, Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. 98 Kathryn Rountree, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist Ritual-Makers in New Zealand (London, UK: Routledge, 2004). 99 Ignaz Cassar, "Towards a Criticality in the Now," Journal of Visual Arts Practice 8, no. 3 (2009): 230. 100 Grosz, Volatile Bodies. 101 Steve Pile, The Body and the City: Psychoanalysis, Space and Subjectivity (New York: Routledge, 2013), 186. 102 Hayv Kahraman, "Q+a between Hayv Kahraman and Myrna Ayad, Editor of Canvas," http://hayvkahraman.com/press/HK_Extimacy_Essay%20QA.pdf. 103 Ibid. 104 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 105 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference, 21. 106 Houston Baker and Charlotte Pierce Baker, "Patches: Quilts, and Community in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use," Southern Review 21, no. July (1985): 713. 107 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference, 21. 108 Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, 24. 109 Smith and Dean, "Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice," 19. 110 Spretnak, The Spiritual Dynamic in Moden Art. 111 Grosz, Volatile Bodies, xii.

78 Chapter 3: Pilgrimage–A Choreography of Mobile Resistance and a Source of Sustenance

Embodying a sensual agency, I became a finely tuned instrument in order to explore and enact the potential of pilgrimage to newly revised gendered sites of reverence as a source of affirmation for women. It is important to note that the thealogical terrains, embodied performance and the practice of pilgrimage may all be sources of affirmation in combination and separately. Yet pilgrimage has multiple connotations, contexts and meanings, changing over time and according to cultural customs.

This chapter strives to condense understandings of pilgrimage into palpable and embodied forms. Firstly, I will consider definitions of pilgrimage before exploring the differences between the experience of the pilgrim and that of the tourist, as this division refers to questions of authentic experience. Secondly, I will examine the way interior and exterior ritualised actions weave together through the motion-based embodied practice of pilgrimage. I conclude with a section on pilgrimages to gendered landscapes identified by the theological authors who led the way in deciphering a feminine face of God. Positioned throughout this chapter are examples of artefacts that reference the concepts of pilgrimage discussed, highlighting the interconnection between contemporary art and the motion-based choreo-geography of pilgrimage.

One definition of ‘pilgrimage’ is the use of the body to trace a line between departure and destination, between the profane and the sacred. Yet, pilgrimage, with its ready associations of ambulator, sojourner, perambulator, saunterer, flâneur, sacred traveller, and visionary tourist, is not easily defined.112 There is no crystallised definition, with varied disciplinary approaches (ranging from ethnology to art history) each adding a subsequent layer of interpretation, making research into pilgrimage an interdisciplinary practice.113 Hence, the concept of ‘pilgrimage’ extends beyond the story of a traveller setting out to reach a precise destination or holy place.114 It is significantly more than a simple

79 jaunt, but represents a transit between the ordinary and the incomprehensible, or what Julia Kristeva points to as the physical exemplar of “the incredible need to believe”.115

Pilgrimages have long been associated with the sacred, as it is often an impetus for undertaking such perambulations. Until recent times, many scholars examined and emphasised the patterns of devotional motion expressed by millions of practitioners of the five major world faiths: Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.116 The many and varied examples of these sacred journeys are exemplified in a host of destinations, including Bodh Gaya, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Our Lady of Knock, Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, and Ganga (Ganges), which have become sacred foci within mainstream religions.117

The prominence that a pilgrimage destination can reach is clearly evidenced in the contemporary art exhibition On the Road that took place at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 2014. On the Road was curated as a way to commemorate the first time that St Francis of Assisi walked the Camino de Santiago. The Basilica at Santiago de Compostela (within which the shrine of the apostle St James the Great is housed) is the destination and arrival point for pilgrims who walk ‘The Way’ (as it is called in its popular form), starting from their homes across Europe and/or alternatively at a commencement point along five major routes beginning in France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.

As a pilgrimage destination within the Christian tradition, the Camino de Santiago has been revived and reimagined after the publication of Shirley MacLaine’s novel Camino (2002) and the film The Way (2010).118 The impact that film and popular narrative can have upon pilgrimage foci is interlinked, especially through the profusion of travel blogging after a cinematic release.119 Lucrezia Lopez argues that pilgrimage can be initiated by “film induced tourism” or the impact of media narratives.120 On the Road featured artists such as Tacita Dean, Francis Alÿs, and Richard Long—known for their work with walking and procession—alongside thirty-one other contemporary artists,121 which reflects

80 the rise in popularity of the pathway itself within mainstream culture, as well as a larger acceptance of themes relating to pilgrimage in contemporary art. These include self-reflection, vision, faith, exploring the sacred, and identifying with the revered body. In On the Road, contemporary artists reflected on their relationship to pilgrimage and motion by expressing this in aesthetic form.

Of prominence was Roni Horn’s installation for ‘Untitled ("A dream dreamt in a dreaming world is not really a dream, ... but a dream not dreamt is.”) (2013, figures 23 & 24) in the Church of Santo Domingo de Bonaval. Here Horn used glass as a motif of fluid change. By walking around the glass containers placed throughout the church, the viewer moves between an inquiry into what is “here and there… now and then”.122 In this way, the glass artefacts, with their suggestive illusion of the whirls and spirals of water, destabilised ideas of a uniform pilgrimage experience, placing emphasis on individuated states of awareness in place. ‘Untitled ("A dream dreamt…), with its inference of water, “embodies the cyclical relationship between humankind and nature—a mirror- like relationship in which we attempt to remake nature in our own image”.123 Interestingly, the act of emphasising the mirror image of one’s self leads to ideas of self-representation, multiplicity and change within specific sites, place and on the road. Ultimately, Horn’s work here is concerned with how to aesthetically express the transformational potential that occurs in the relationship between natural settings and states of being: an awareness that pilgrimage affords.124

Ruth Blackwell asserts that while pilgrimage is an important feature of mainstream religion, it has taken place for well over thirty thousand years, noting that while the sites may change, the internal motivation for undertaking a sacred journey is similar. She suggests the aim of pilgrimage has been to travel to sites where artefacts carry a “life force”.125

However, despite considering how a site can be consecrated by multiple faiths over different linear timeframes—creating sedimentary layers of sacred devotion—Blackwell also points out how artefacts can be symbolically or

81 Figure 23 & 24 Roni Horn, ‘Untitled ("A dream dreamt in a dreaming world is not really a dream, ... but a dream not dreamt is.”)’ 2013, solid cast glass with as-cast surfaces, 10 parts with heights ranging from 48 to 49.5cm and diameters range from 86 to 91cm. For exhibition On the Road 2014, installation view, Santo Domingo de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Photo courtesy Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. 82 intrinsically sacred. Through ritual intervention, the sculpture/s at pilgrimage foci are, or can become, seemingly animate. Hence, devotional objects pulse with the potency of primordial power. Such a life force can be experienced in the surrounding terrain; thus, a symbiotic relationship exists between landscape and artefacts, where both are intertwined and interconnected in the generation of pilgrimage sites as places of spiritual presence.

The transformation of everyday objects through the process of exposure to both pilgrimage and to icons considered to be one with the source of creation can be clearly seen in the work of artist Alinka Echeverria. In the exhibition The Road to Tepeyac (2010, figures 25 & 26), Echeverria documents 120 of the one million Mexicans who undertake the arduous journey to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City each year. Photographing pilgrims en route, Echeverria focuses on each pilgrim’s back where upon they have bound and strapped iterations, replications and objects exemplary of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to be blessed. Echeverria then cuts each pilgrim out of the landscape and juxtaposes her against a white background. By focusing on the bodily position where the objects the pilgrim carries are nestled, Echeverria highlights aspects of the experience of pilgrimage.

Firstly, the individual nature of the pilgrim within a community setting is exemplified, as each photograph depicts a pilgrim alone rather than moving in choreographic form with others. Secondly, the personal relationship between pilgrim and her object as symbolic source of affirmation is emphasised through Echeverria’s focus not on the person, but on the object—noting the intimate and determined way in which the pilgrim suffers over miles in order to bring the sculpture/s into the physical presence of the sacred. Thirdly, Echeverria makes evident that a sculptural object can transform from being lifeless to an embodiment of the luminous power of the sacred if it has been exposed to or reaches the pilgrimage destination. The viewer is left to guess whether each pilgrim reaches the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City. What ritualised action within the site itself did the pilgrims undertake? Is it simply the physicality of

83 Figure 25 & 26 Alinka Echeverria, The Road to Tepeyac 2010, archival pigment print, hahnemuhle fine art print, 62 × 80cm. Image courtesy the artist.

84 bearing witness to and being in the presence in the site itself that enhances a transmission between the sacred and the sculptures the pilgrims bore along the way? Finally, Echeverria’s work points to the power of coded cultural imagery within and for Mexico.126 By focusing on the back of the pilgrim, she is documenting the motion towards that which is deemed holy on the outside, and upon each pilgrim’s return home, the specific emblem of the Madonna they have chosen that has been given sacred significance.

Hence, pilgrimage is a process whereby the pilgrim seeks to experience, touch, and/or feel a particular essence by leaving home and travelling towards a sacred site.127 Conrad Rudolph expands further, “The premise of the pilgrimage was that the holy could be localised and the crowds expected its presence to be palpable at the great holy site.”128 Pilgrims strive to open themselves up to the reverent explicitly located within a carefully selected environment. This form of sacred geography is consecrated not just by the pilgrims themselves but by the sheer number of pilgrims who similarly participate in this highly choreographed performance. In this embodied state of communal action and arrival, the particular locales come to represent sites where the transcendent touches the immanent, where the unseen is experienced by the seen, and where the intangible is made real. In this way, the sacrality of the site is generated and maintained because the pilgrim, through participation, is a witness to the sacred.

The Transmutation of Pilgrimage into Art

The workings of fate are thus not absent from this process of transmission and reinforcement through pilgrimage. Douglas Challenger suggests that prior to modernity, the place and economic station one was born into determined one’s religious belief and ways of making meaning in the world.129 Larry L. Rasmussen takes this one step further, suggesting that our fate is also gleaned from our birth point on the evolutionary spectrum of life. The exact moment or pinprick of time that one was born into is defined by the drama of ever differentiating, ever- unfolding human life: the chain of evolution plays a pivotal role in one’s ability to

85 interpret the world. Rasmussen suggests that as human life changes, so too does consciousness.130 A progression of self-reflexive meaning-makers who dream, query and seek answers has come into being through modernity. In this wave of searching for meaning, the advent of the postmodern allows for a pluralisation of faith whereby the individual may choose between secular, non-religious, and the religious.131 Pilgrimage studies thus become divided into many strands, including the secular and the religious, carrying with it subtle undertones of a division between tourists versus the pilgrim. A boundary explored by Luigi Tomasi:

In seeking to determine what distinguishes the modern pilgrim from the tourist, Tomasi speculates that it is the ‘inner disposition’, the ‘typically human desire to seek out the sacred’.132 According to Tomasi, what is clear in the literature, however, is that the notion or understanding of the ‘sacred’ has become ‘multivalenced’ among the many visitors’.133

Tomasi references cognitive processes as the delineating factor in how the tourist or pilgrim moves away from, or turns towards, the meaningful. Yet, Rasmussen pointed out that it is only through self-reflexive meaning making that one can come to understand one’s position, to know whether one is tourist, pilgrim, or even accidental pilgrim.

This sense of meaning making through the process of introspection, while part of the many qualities upheld through transdisciplinary practice, is also paramount in religious studies research. Often, it is appropriate for the researcher to divulge one’s perspective, revealing one’s position, including but not limited to location, race, gender, and religious upbringing. This recommended action is undertaken so that the reader can best understand and deconstruct the aesthetic response and supportive investigation with an eye to the constraints and/or influences of any inner or outer dispositions the researcher may have.

To state my own position, I am a doctoral student whose PhD project aims to validate meaningful feminist geographies of the sacred by my pilgrimage to sites reflective of God-as-Woman. A Griffith University Research Scholarship has provided me with the time, funding, and space required to undertake the

86 physically arduous process of dwelling outside of normative life experiences in order to participate in perpetual pilgrimage to artist in residences and geographies of God-as-Woman. This means I am pilgrim from a seat of privilege; a privilege that is reflective of Rasmussen’s sense of fate as mentioned previously.

I approach the creation of artefacts and intertwined research from the perspective of a religious philosophical thinker, and a reader of spiritual memoir literature. Underlying this research are the influences of my background as Australian and Italian, a woman, and a feminist raised within a Romanised Western Christian perspective. This combination of influence and birth shapes the way I see, act, feel, intuit, know, sense and respond to both art production and the world. This narrow viewpoint may be a weakness but it is this specificity which is also my redemption, for the accumulation and arrangement of experiences makes me a conduit for the field of gendered pilgrimage that becomes my laboratory. As Luce Irigaray states:

[Women have to] discover their word(s), be faithful to it and, interweaving it with their bodies, make it a living and spiritual flesh. This stage is not just necessary for their divine becoming, but also for that of man. It is as two—through respecting their difference(s), that man and woman are co-redeemers of the world; of their bodies, of the cosmic universe, of society and of history.134

In a creative example of pilgrimage, photographer Annie Leibovitz travelled over two consecutive years between museums and sites of historic value, seeking out landscapes, curiosities and personal items associated with persons of high historical renown. Once there, she photographed such artefacts as Georgia O’Keeffe’s collection of bones and Virginia Woolf’s ink-stained desktop. Acquiring access to these culturally coded markers ultimately references a hierarchy of personal preference.135 The act of distillation, the process of deciding which sites to travel towards and which images to leave out, provides the viewer with just as much information about the objects as the artist’s own personality. Amy Worden reveals:

87 In 2009, suddenly thrust into the headlines [Annie Leibovitz] after filing for bankruptcy and still recovering from the loss several years earlier of her longtime companion Susan Sontag and her father, shifted her focus inward.

Leibovitz, 63, jotted down a list of people who changed the world through their writings, their art, their discoveries, and their leadership, and ventured out to explore their private places.136

This resulted in a photographic exhibition, Pilgrimage (2009-2011, figures 27, 28, 29), where Leibowitz was clear that each image was not a souvenir but rather an assemblage of ideas and concepts that could be considered as portraiture.137

Pilgrims often set off in search of something intangible inside and outside of themselves, which they wish to emulate and make real; therefore, embodiment cannot be separated from pilgrimage. The act of moving towards a destination occurs within and through the body, impacting the practitioner physically, emotionally and psychically. In travelling towards a sacred place, form or expression, the body apprehends the possibilities and limitations of the quest.138

Pilgrimage as an Experience of Gendered Bodies in Motion

As noted previously, ‘woman’ here is considered an amorphous, multifarious identifier of sexuate difference. A woman’s body is a site of anatomy and biology; each is one unique and porous to the landscape and terrains of pilgrimage in an individualised way. In The Moon and the Moat series (2000-2003, figures 30 & 31), Janaina Tschäpe explores the way her womanly form and flesh bulges and diverges into multiple streams of becoming. Often referred to as the “Goddess of Water and Melancholy”, Tschäpe’s first name “Janaina” is a contemporary epithet of the goddess Iemanjá. Iemanjá is ‘the Queen of the Waters of the Sea’ synonymous with the body of water that the ocean represents.139 Tschäpe embraces her namesake, photographing herself in biomorphic ever-evolving postures in sea and water terrains, exploring the mythology of inherited woman’s power that derives from her Brazilian ancestry.140 88 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 27 Annie Leibovitz, A dress worn by Emily Dickinson 2011, from “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011).

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 28 Annie Leibovitz, A gown worn by the opera singer Marian Anderson 2011, from “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011).

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 29 Annie Leibovitz, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada 2009, photography, 61.91 × 89.53 cm.

89 Reflecting on transmutation as innate to women, Tschäpe juxtaposes synthetic materials and the organic to reference internal and external blossoming. Her practice focus is situated in a discovery of botanical growth occurring in and through woman’s body as allegory for voluminous nature.141 Readily apparent in The Moon and the Moat series are roots and bulbous forms that layer over her body and disappear into water sources, photographed so that the viewer realizes the wholly consuming relationship women have to the world. Shelley Rice notes:

There is no male gaze in Iemanjá’s primal world, the world after the rain; there is no male at all. These women are the world, the world is them. Existing in themselves, for themselves, they create the undifferentiated cosmos as they wash ashore on the waves of the sea.142

It is this focus on self-generation through transformation and creation that is of interest here. Tschäpe flourishingly photographs herself and others in various watery landscapes, creating “a female vision”.143

In this sense, ‘pilgrimage’ is an act of becoming and transformation; a form of chrysalis in motion, occurring both in the process of the journey, and upon reaching the destination. It is also realised within and without. The body changes as it responds to climate and environmental challenges: weight may be gained to deal with the cold; blisters may appear on the feet after consecutive days of walking; stubble may appear because the pilgrim has no access to razors. However, a process of revelation also occurs within. Each cell in the body is made new, as new ideas, thoughts, sights, sensations, and smells are taken in and experienced by the senses. There is an opportunity for personal growth, which may never have been possible had one remained among family and friends in familiar surroundings.

George Greenia writes of the pivotal role that authenticity plays in pilgrimage, and the striving towards an idealised embodied state that pilgrims seek to enact as a form of “clean” performance. In his text “What Is Pilgrimage?”, he suggests that pilgrims create idealised versions of what a pilgrim’s behaviour looks like

90 Figure 30 Tschäpe, Livia_2 (after the rain series) 2000, cibachrome print, 50.8 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy the artist.

Figure 31 Tschäpe, Livia_2 (after the rain series) 2003, cibachrome print 50.8 x 76.2cm. Image courtesy the artist.

91 and attempt to replicate this so as to leave behind “shame, guilt, indebtedness or [a] damaged reputation”.144 Often, this mimicry of behaviour is an attempt to emulate mystics and pilgrims from the various religious traditions of which the pilgrim’s faith is derived. They may evoke exemplary rigorous inner states and physical hardship in order to achieve legitimised states of pilgrimage; for example, emulating Christ’s suffering during the forty days he spent in the desert by walking the Via Dolorosa carrying the crucifix.

This embodied form of authentic pilgrim practice is hyper-realised in the film The Great Beauty (2013), in which the nun Sister Maria is about to become a living saint.145 We witness her death as she climbs the stairs on her knees. Her ravaged hands pull her body ever upwards, her ragged breath palpable, years of suffering and exhaustion are evident as she moves into the light. Her purity is her beauty. She is symbolic of the idealisation of the value of suffering and pain on pilgrimage in a traditional religious context.

However, pilgrimage can also be approached as an interdisciplinary inquiry, as is evident in this exegesis. From the pious to the experimental, understanding of pilgrimage in recent times has moved away from its strong ties to religiosity. Pilgrimage has become a fluid term, incorporating journeys to fashionable and novel sites, from sporting events to the shrines of new religious movements.146 Nanna Natalia Karpinska Dam Jorgensen describes pilgrimage as the process of setting out towards an aspirational goal, “the pursuit of a sacred place or a state embodying a valued idea”.147 This notion of ‘something’ or ‘embodiment’ is subjective and limitless, yet also reflects the idea of an inner and outer journey which, as mentioned previously, is symbiotic.148

Hence, the journey of the pilgrim is equally important to reaching their destination.149 It is not simply a focus on the point of arrival at a site deemed to be outside of the ordinary and in some way holy or sacred, but of the amalgamation of moments that brings the pilgrim to her desired point. Lesley D. Harman writes:

92 At its most basic, [pilgrimage] could refer to a person who moves from one place to another in search of a sacred destination. Hence the mode of transportation is not specified, nor does the “success” of the quest matter. Rather it is the movement through time and space and the search for the sacred, which is iconographic.150

Pilgrimage therefore involves multiple modes of transportation. The journey commences from the moment the initial idea is formulated and preparation begins. En route, the pilgrim may take shuttle buses, trains, trams, cars, taxi, planes, boats, cruise ships, bicycles, skateboards, and/or ride on horseback. While there appears to be a sense of hierarchy and preference for being on foot over and above other forms of transportation, it is still possible to envision pilgrims as bodies of devotion moving variously across the surface of the Earth. They leave a myriad of trails, which embody the notion of transnational mobility within the sphere of the globe, resulting in a moving cartography of devotional space.

Yet, in today’s cyber culture, pilgrimage may also occur solely within the imagination or through time and space determined by and experienced through virtual technology. The pilgrim thus becomes an explorer of the potential of interiority. For instance, in Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, Kathryn M. Rudy gives a gendered account of internalised meditative practices whereby nuns were able to journey without leaving the confines of enclosed monastery walls.151 The mode of transportation to the sacred site (Jerusalem) is undertaken through the use of visual aids and meditational trance-like practices, which spark intrinsic internal methods developed in response to living a cloistered life.152

Pilgrimage is therefore ritualised gesture in motion, a performative experience that occurs both internally and externally. Reflecting this focus on the interior and exterior process of sacred journey-making is the birth of a new literary genre titled “visionary journeys”, where authors strive to make sense of the action of moving towards the sacred. Among them are many women writers who enact feminine pathways, travelling to gendered landscapes and pilgrimage

93 shrines that manifest notions of God-as-Woman. Virtual and vicarious journeys can be made through literary and popularised fictions. Eat Pray Love (2010) The Way (2010), and Wild (2014) are cinematic examples of this postmodern phenomenon to understand one’s self through virtual engagement with journey making.153

In all the multifaceted manifestations of its forms and interdisciplinary definitions, ‘pilgrimage’ can be likened to an aperiodic crystal: “an ordered repetitive pattern with various possibilities of expression”.154 Because of the kaleidoscope of potential interpretations within the framework of pilgrimage, the terms ‘pilgrim’ and ‘pilgrimage’ have been used as terms that bind together disparate and often contradictory categories, such as tourist and pilgrim. Moreover, ‘pilgrimage’ cannot be used as a neutral term due to its association and long history with the five major world faiths. Clearly, there is a need to identify a new approach to exploring how a contemporary art practice can aesthetically depict pilgrimages to sites where God-as-She is identified and celebrated.

It’s Not Just a Case of History Repeating: Pilgrimages to Gendered Landscapes

Across time, women have walked towards feminised sites of sacrality. Pilgrimage is not just a practice but also a landscape,155 a particular form of psycho- geography, which has inherent traits. Yi-Fu Tuan suggests:

A landscape is not a given, a piece of reality that is simply there… but an effort of the imagination, an ordering of reality from different angles, a combining of objective and subjective in the mind’s eye. The terrain of place is then substantially internal, the picture made within the frame of individual perception.156

Yi-Fu Tuan reminds us that place and geography are not neutral but have been crafted by an internal lens, culturally saturated; a refined symbolic visual language that overlays and influences the way in which landscape and 94 geographical markers are perceived.157 This in turn affects how one sees, experiences, and ultimately understands places of pilgrimage.158 In sum, landscape is not neutral.159 Rather, it is gender- and culture-specific and often exclusive.160 This fact is apparent in pilgrimage studies from the very moment the pilgrim makes the decision to depart.

Before beginning a journey into the vast gendered landscapes of the world, it is important for one to know the destination and be prepared. One of the preparatory factors is topographical knowledge—how to take the right path, what the indicators/markers that outline the trail look like—as this will ultimately give one the ability to complete a successful pilgrimage. In this sense, markers set up choreographed pathways of movement that allow pilgrims to move with a coordinated bodily experience through place: for example, arrow, scallop, number, or signpost, point the journey-maker in the right direction.

In deciding how to prepare, the pilgrim must ask: what is a compatible way to reach the starting point of the pilgrim trail? Where does the path begin? Or are there multiple choices? Having choices such as the commencement point implies that someone, somewhere, and at some point in history has charted the trail, set the course and completed the quest in an honoured, respectful and perhaps even idealised way. But why would one want to walk in another’s shoes? Gregory Bateson addresses these points directly:

We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations, which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. […] Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.161

Bateson touches on this point of representation directly when he suggests that a map is merely a rendering of the mental world of the person, usually a man, who made the map. In focusing on the depiction, we have forgotten to question ‘what 95 is the territory?’ and does in fact the man who made the map best represent our individual and collective interpretations of that geographical location?162 If a female had established the initial sacred trail marker/s, would she have made different choices when faced with a challenge on the pathway? Would the interpretations a female cartographer have made been the same as those made by a male cartographer?

Furthermore, have pilgrimage practices developed by females or feminine sites in ancient times become subsumed within an oppressive or dominant patriarchal culture? An exemplar of this is the aforementioned Camino de Santiago, which once may have started as a pilgrimage to an Ancient Mother—a course that charts the patterns of the stars upon the surface of the Earth—but is now the way to the shrine of St James. Earth-based faith movements continue to propose that the trail mirrors the Milky Way; a celestial configuration that symbolises the breast milk of the Mother.163 This belief of a Great Mother path lingers on in the scallop shells that mark the way as representations of Venus, the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite.164 This belief is complemented by the fables of Saint Brigid in Ireland who is depicted milking a cow in many churches along the trail.165 But is this myth or fact? This is important to consider because it represents the unknown aspects of pilgrimage, and how pilgrimage trails can be overtaken by successive, dominant cultural and political forms. Each pilgrimage has origins steeped in lore and myth passed down from generation to generation, but the transmission of knowledge has become and remains patriarchal.

But should gender even be the focus here? Perhaps there is another power at play: the sacred. One can ask if the person who demarcated the pilgrimage trail was overcome by the very essence of life itself? Consumed by a creator Goddess and/or God and as such becoming an inert gender-neutral object fulfilling an external creator’s goal, allowing her body to become a mere puppet under a god’s control? Does the divine cancel out gender? This is a deep theological question, one which hinges on understandings of modes and motivations that filter down through the layers of religious cultural practices and outwards into

96 post-secular society.166 Carol P. Christ’s writing on the concept of a male figurehead as God, which equates to a very alive form of patriarchy, will be discussed in greater lengths in the following chapter.

The question then arises, have men and women been equally able and permitted to seek out places of pilgrimage throughout time? Have the practices of navigating sacred courses differed from continent to continent, and from ancient to modern times? The pathways constructed today do not adequately represent the footsteps taken in the past as diversions, and rerouting must take into account modern-day developments that are now inserted into the landscape (such as housing estates, highways, rail roads, and new economic centers). The map in the hand of the pilgrim becomes one of importance as an exemplar of cultural inheritance, alongside a form of wayfinding. Neil Gaiman, in Fragile Things, reflects on the disparaties between interpretation and accurate reproduction in cartography:

The way one describes a story, to oneself or the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory.167

The pathways of pilgrimage are not gender neutral, nor are the pilgrim destinations, tales, stories, myths, and legends that arise out of them. One of the oldest Christian pilgrimage accounts is that of a pious woman, Egeria, who travels to the Holy Land of the Judaic and Christian traditions in the fourth century CE. She desires to “see all the places where the children of Israel had been”.168 Her insistence on seeing the places reveals that she wishes to know more than the tale, or what the map reveals, in order to know the territory of the biblical traditions through her direct, embodied experience. Egeria writes “All the way I kept asking to see the different places mentioned in the Bible, and they were all pointed out to me by the holy men, the clergy and monks with us.”169

97 John Wilkinson writes, “Reciprocal mapping of text onto topography and topography onto text is ritualised for Egeria: ‘whenever we arrived, I always wanted the Bible passage to be read to us’.”170 Egeria is thus driven by desire to experience something new by seeking to witness something old and to see with her own eyes the stories played out in landscapes that for her hold the memory of the theological stories she has inherited. Yet, these stories are passed on to her by “the holy men, the clergy and monks”, each presenting a particular way for Egeria to understand the landscape by pointing out particular aspects of the environment. Again, this is not void of gendered ways of seeing as the sacred is always interpreted through social conventions and expectations. How does Egeria avoid these stereotypes in order to gaze upon the settings desired by her devotional self? Laura Mulvey considers the gendered implications of looking:

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.171

Situated Acts of Sensing the Sacred

Looking and desire are closely interrelated, braiding both a way of being in the world and a way of comprehending place. Desire is an essential element of the post-secular phenomena of nomadic behaviour. Braidotti elucidates:

Desire is a process of negotiation between layers, sedimentations, registers of speech, frameworks of enunciation. Desire is productive because it flows on, it keeps on moving, but its productivity also entails power relations, transitions between contradictory registers, shifts of emphasis.172

These shifts of emphasis enable the pilgrim to embody a remembered cultural inheritance, which may cause the practitioner to have freshly felt responses whether bodily, mentally or spiritually. Pilgrimage thus becomes a space of seen

98 and unseen reactions on a quest to experience that which is divine in a gendered sphere. Laura Sewall argues:

It is only through the senses that we experience what it means to be fully human. It is only through the engaged senses that we are able to feel desire and intimacy, the great longing to be fully, wholly, and utterly in the world. But it is only through the honest and engaged senses that we will come to appreciate the living world, as it truly is, both wildly beautiful and endangered. Cultivating our perceptual capacity is fundamentally related to both the quality of our personal lives and restoring the quality of life on the planet.173

This is in line with the research of Marilyn Nelsen, who states "Our senses are often our most immediate connection to soul.”174 Pilgrimage sites become ones that inhibit or exacerbate the senses. A primary example of inserting the body into a gendered landscape associated with a Great Mother Goddess is Mary Beth Edelson’s Grapceva Neolithic Cave Series: See For Yourself already mentioned in “Chapter 1: Introduction–Crossing the Threshold into Thealogical Terrains” (figure 1). In 1977 Edelson travelled to Hvar Island (Former Yugoslavia) to visit a cave long associated with an ancient mother goddess. Inside Edelson undertook a series of performances involving ritual and invoking the energy of a great mother goddess, documented through a series of photographs. She later spoke of the performance art series stating; “I felt one long hand extending across time, sending a jolt of energy into my body. I began my rituals–the energy from the rituals seemed to pulsate from the vaulted ceiling and to me and back again.”175

Of specific importance with this work is that Edelson has undertaken a pilgrimage—travelling from California—to a site representative of feminist activist ideals expressed in the 1970s and which continues to be present in the work of feminist thealogians. Edelson also pays profound attention to her bodily senses and her body’s position within the cave itself, experiencing the energy linked to ritualistic offerings to a primal mother goddess ricocheting from the cave walls back to her body, metaphorically reminding the viewer of the deity’s indwelling. 99 Particular to the act of nomadism or pilgrimage is this unification of body and mind, exemplified in Edelson’s prescribed ritual yet full-body-sensing which is as Rebecca Solnit describes in Wanderlust: A History of Walking:

…when you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.176

Performance artist Rachel Gomme extends this idea in her work Second Skin (2013, figure 32), suggesting that new sensations remind one of the past, allowing memories to arise that have lingered in the skin waiting to be remembered.177 In this way, women set off on pathways to reach divine feminine sites for multitudinous reasons, driven by desire to experience something new or something old.

While many pilgrims travel to convents or sites of interfaith worship focused on feminine qualities such as the Tekka in Cyprus, so too do monastic women undertake pilgrimages developing their own faith-based art in response. With the exclusion of ‘herstory’ from conventional histories, women have combed through the pages of time to create new places of pilgrimages as well as to remember places of the past for what might have been, for what could be, for what is an understanding of goddess now. Carol P. Christ is one such woman.

Seeking to string together a multiplicity of sites that epitomise the concept of a Mother God, Carol P. Christ has restructured her life so that she can live in Greece and revisit sites of the sacred, creating a program that enables women to travel with her. She re-enacts pilgrimages to Crete and Lesvos, Greece, to visit Aphrodite shrines and sites associated with the Minoan culture where an emphasis on a priestess tradition and possible female figurehead for God is physically evident.

100 Figure 32 Rachel Gomme, Second Skin 2000 reworked in 2008, photographic documentation of durational performance. Photographer Jess Wallace for Rachel Gomme. Image courtesy the artist

101 This is in keeping with Zvi Shir who, in writing of Sigalit Landau’s work, talks of a ‘geo mental’ functioning whereby geography is created as a result of the mental processes of imagination that weave into the landscape and cannot be separated from it. Shir suggests that ecofeminist artists, poets, musicians, academics and theologians sought a re-weaving of space to create depictions that best describe a female experience of the divine in landscape, whether romantic or grimy, polished or un-kept.178 They sought to define and demarcate places and spaces that best expresses the mental geography of the artist to embrace both sexes through the goddess. Joni Seager and Lise Nelson note:

The body is the touchstone of feminist theory. Within contemporary feminist theory “the body” does not have a single location or scale; rather it is a concept that disrupts naturalized dichotomies and embraces a multiplicity of material and symbolic sites.179

Discovering and revealing multiple sites for God-as-Woman, it became visible to me that the landscape matches the multiple ways in which women inhabit and enact bodies. In this way, the Earth becomes a multitude of sacred places for remembering, revisiting and recreating the goddess in much the same manner as women reinvent, reconstruct, and redefine their identities within the goddess tradition. Craig Harbison, in his review of Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent by author Jeffrey Hamburger, opens the following question up for discussion, which will be explored in the next chapter: “Do these images of women made by women for women’s use reveal a distinct female point of view— a particular female spirituality?”180

In summary, this chapter has strived to outline the long history of the relationship between women, art, and journey making. Visitations to sites as a practice of pilgrimage have a long-standing tradition in women's history, as can be witnessed in Neolithic sites, medieval writings, and embroidery works.181 While each contemporary step taken is on new terrain, the pilgrim is simultaneously participating in an ancient cultural memory. The pilgrimage embodies a remembering of cultural inheritance, which may cause the practitioner to have fresh felt responses whether bodily, mentally or spiritually. 102 Pilgrimage thus becomes a space of seen and unseen reactions on a quest to experience that which is divine.

103 112 Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (New York: Penguin, 2013), 84+85; Roberta Mock, Walking, Writing and Performance (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2009); Phil Smith, Mythogeography (Axminster, UK: Triarchy Press, 2010); Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Chicago: Penguin, 2001). 113 Peter Jan Margry, " Secular Pilgrimage: A Contradiction in Terms?," in Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred, ed. Peter Jan Margry (Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 13. 114 Anon, "Pilgrimage," in Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015). 115 Julia Kristeva, This Incredible Need to Believe, trans. Beverley Bie Brahic (Rome, IT: Donzelli Editore, 2006). 116 Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 1. 117 Ellen Badone and Sharon R Roseman, Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Surinder Mohan Bhardwaj, Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India: A Study in Cultural Geography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). 118 Shirley MacLaine, The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), 201; Emilio Estevez, "The Way," (Spain, United States: Icon Productions and Producers Distribution Agency, 2010). 119 Suzanne van der Beek, "Ritual Authenticity as Social Criticism.," in The Study of Culture through the Lens of Ritual. , ed. Paul Post and Logan Sparks, Netherlands Studies in Ritual and Liturgy, (Groningen, NL: Instituut voor Christelijk Erfgoed and Instituut voor Liturgische en Rituele Studies, 2015); Suzanne van der Beek and Tom van Nuenen, "Pilgrim or Tourist?: Modelling Two Types of Travel Bloggers," Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 11 (2016). 120 Lucrezia Lopez, David Santomil Mosquera, and Rubén Camilo Lois González, "Film-Induced Tourism in the Way of Saint James," AlmaTourism: Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Developmental Review 4 (2015). 121 Julius Purcell, "‘On the Road’, Santiago De Compostela: How the Historic Spanish City Is Using Contemporary Art to Celebrate One of Its Most Famous Pilgrims," Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/ae0b6c54-010d-11e4-a938-00144feab7de. 122 Anon, "Roni Horn," Galleria Rafaella Cortese, http://www.galleriaraffaellacortese.com/artists/roni-horn/biography.html. 123 "Roni Horn: About the Artist," Art 21: Art in the Twenty-First century, http://www.art21.org/artists/roni-horn?expand=1. 124 "Roni Horn : October 2, 2016 – January 1, 2017 " https://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/roni-horn. 125 Ruth Blackwell, "Motivations for Religious Tourism, Pilgrimages, Festivals and Events” in Ed. Razaq Raj, Nigel D. Morpeth," in Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Festivals Management: An International Perspective, ed. Razaq Raj and Nigel D. Morpet (Cambridge, MA: CABI Pub, 2007), 36. 126 Christina Clusiau, "Alinka Echeverria: The Road to Tepeyac," TIME, http://time.com/3776628/alinka-echeverria-the-road-to-tepeyac/. 127Anon, "Roni Horn : October 2, 2016 - January 1, 2017 "; Lesley D. Harman, "What Is a Sociology of Pilgrimage?," in A Sociology of Pilgrimage, ed. Lesley D Harman (London, ON: Ursus Press, 2014), 37. 128 Conrad Rudolph, Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago De Compostela (Chicago,: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 14. 129 Douglas Challenger, "Secularisation and the Camino De Santiago Pilgrimage," in A Sociology of Pilgrimage, ed. Lesley D Harman (London, ON: Ursus Press, 2014), 130. 130 Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth Honouring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), 25. 131 Peter L. Berger, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011), 139.

104 132 Luigi Tomasi, "Homo Viator: From Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism Via the Journey," in From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety ed. William H Swatos and Luigi Tomasi (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 20. 133 Tomasi cited in Harman, "What Is a Sociology of Pilgrimage?," 37. 134 Luce Irigaray, Key Writings (London, UK: Continuum, 2004), 151. 135 Ken Johnson, "Bullet Holes to Bones: Artifacts with Meaning," New York TImes, 5 December 2014. 136 Amy Worden, "Finding Souls in a Search for Solace: Photographer Annie Leibovitz, Reeling from Loss, Turned Inward. Then She Set out to Find the Private Places of Those Who Had Changed the World. The Result Is Her Book "Pilgrimage"," Philadelphia Inquirer 25 October 2012. 137 Anon, "A Rare Annie Leibovitz Exhibition in Singapore Reveals: 38 Iconic, Large-Scale Photographs," ARTSY, https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-a-rare-annie-leibovitz-exhibition- in-singapore. 138 Sara Terreault, Pilgrim Bodies: An Anatomy of Christian and Post-Christian Intentional Movement, vol. Edited volume in preparation Pilgrimage Studies Series (Farnham, UK Burlington, CAN: under contract for Ashgate Publishers Forthcoming publication 2017). 139 Kelly Johnson, "Artist Spotlight: Janaina Tschäpe, Goddess of Water and Melancholy," National Museum of Women in the Arts, https://nmwa.org/blog/2014/07/28/artist-spotlight-janaina- tschape-goddess-of-water-and-melancholy/. 140 Suzanne Anker and Sabine Flach, Art - Knowledge - Theory : Embodied Fantasies : From Awe to Artifice (Bern: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2013), 234. 141 Edourard Malingue Gallery, "Janaina TschäPe," Edourard Malingue Gallery, http://edouardmalingue.com/artists/janaina-tschape/. 142 Shelley Rice, "Reflections on the Moon, Mirrored in the Moat," Janaina Tschäpe http://www.janainatschape.net/interviews/. 143 Ibid. 144 George Greenia, "What Is Pilgrimage?," in A Sociology of Pilgrimage, ed. Lesley D Harman (London, ON: Ursus Press, 2014), 17. 145 Paolo Sorrentino, "The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)," (Italy: Indigo Film, 2013). 146 Ian Reader, Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 111. 147 Nanna Natalia Karpinska Dam Jorgensen, El Camino Santiago: Walking Oneself to Wellbeing, Reclaiming and Reinforcing One’s Spirit (Saarbrücken, GER: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010), 7. 148 Sorrentino, "The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza)." E. Alan Morinis, "Introduction: The Territory of the Anthropology of Pilgrimage," in Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, ed. E. Alan Morinis (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992), ix. 149 Gillian Cowlishaw and Barry Morris, Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and "Our" Society (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1997), 38. 150 Lesley D. Harman, "Authenticity Discourses among Pilgrims on the Camino De Santiago: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective," in A Sociology of Pilgrimage, ed. Lesley D Harman (London, ON: Ursus Press, 2014), 247.; Rasmussen, Earth Honouring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key 16. 151 Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). 152 Ibid. 153 Ryan Murphy, "Eat Pray Love," (United States: Columbia Pictures, 2010); Estevez, "The Way."; Jean-Marc Vallée, "Wild," (United States: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2014). 154 Rasmussen, Earth Honouring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key 16 155 Ron Johnston and James Sidaway, Geography and Geographers (London: Arnold, 2004); Paul Carter, The Lie of the Land (London: Faber and Faber, 1996); Dark Writing: Geography, Performance, Design (Melbourne: Hawaii University Press, 2008). 156 Yi-Fu Tuan, "Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Minds Eye," in The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, ed. Donald William Meinig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 90–100.

105 157 Linda McDowell, "Doing Gender: Feminisms, Feminists and Research Methods in Human Geography," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17 (1992). 158 Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 102. 159 Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999). 160 Linda McDowell and Joanne P. Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography (London, UK: Edward Arnold, 1999). 161 Gregory Bateson, "Form, Substance and Difference . In Gregory Bateson," in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, ed. Gregory Bateson (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1972), 454–71. Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, 102. 162 Joni Seager and Lise Nelson, Companion to Feminist Geography (Blackwell Companions to Geography (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). 163 Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983). 164 Mercedes C Quesada-Embid, "Dwelling, Walking, Serving: Organic Preservation Along the Camino De Santiago Pilgrimage Landscape " (Antioch University, 2008). 165 Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Carol P. Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections," in Womanspirit Rising, ed. Christ Carol P and Plaskow Judith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979). 166 Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess; Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete; Rebirth of the Goddess : Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997); She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the Divine in the World, 1st; Symbols of Goddess and God in Feminist Theology, ed. Carl Olson, The Book of the Goddess Past and Present (New York: Crossroads, 1988). "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections." 167 Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (London, UK: Headline, 2010), 10. 168 John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House, 1981), 100. 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid. 171 Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 11. 172 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference, 14. 173 Laura Sewall, Sight and Sensibility: The Ecopsychology of Perception (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999), 14. 174 Marilyn Janice Nelsen, "Re-Membering the Soul through the Senses: Mediations,Reﬂections and Reveries on the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestry" (Paciﬁca Graduate Institute, 2004), 4. 175 Cited in Jennie Klein, “Goddess: Feminist Art and Spirituality in the 1970s,” Feminist Studies, 35: 3 (Fall 2009), 575. 176 Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking 13. 177 Deirdre Heddon and Cathy Turner, "Walking Women: Interviews with Artists on the Move," Performance Research 15, no. 4 (2010); "Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility," Contemporary Theatre Review 22, no. 2 (2012). 178 Zvi Shir, "(Medieval) Geographies in Sigailt Landau’s Work," in Landau, Sigalit, 1969–, ed. Sigalit Landau, et al. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008). 179 Seager and Nelson, Companion to Feminist Geography (Blackwell Companions to Geography, 2. 180 Craig Harbison, "Review of Jeffrey F. Hamburger, "Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent" " 51, no. 4 (1998): 1363–65. 181 Leigh Ann Craig, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

106 Chapter 4: Affirmative Ethics–Flourishing as a Means of Negating Theological Meta Narratives

First of all, feminist theory is based on a radical dis-engagement from the dominant institutions and representations of femininity and masculinity, to enter the process of becoming minoritarian or of transforming gender. In so doing, feminism combines critique with creation of alternative ways of embodying and experiencing our sexualized selves. —Rosi Braidotti182

In the previous chapter it was noted that alternative gendered pilgrimage landscapes can be allegories for the multiple ways in which women inhabit and enact bodies. Visual depictions of a women’s body are not neutral. Rather coded cultural imagery has been used to visualise women’s bodies, sacred landscapes and the aesthetics of God-as-She, throughout time. For this reason, this chapter strives to consider contemporary revisioning of God-as-Woman, maternal and sexuate, in relation to women’s bodies and art. A review of sexuate aesthetics aligned with the current recuperation and reclamation of sexuate capabilities and processes of woman’s bodies in contemporary feminisms will be addressed throughout this chapter.

The use of the word ‘revival’ is paramount here for current feminist revisioning employing the empowering use of motifs relating to women’s biological capabilities and processes engages with and builds on the feminist aesthetic language generated by second wave feminists. These feminists drew on affirmative ethics and action in order to cultivate women's’ identity and empowerment through critical engagement with the vagina as a symbol of creativity, power and primal life force in the early 1960s and 1970s. Through corporeal sexual self-definition thealogians and artists explored, and continue to explore, a new language of the sacred creating a “space-time continuum” between new and old ways of interpreting the vagina.183 One which is aligned with the core premise of this thesis: to explore new ways of engaging with continuous pilgrimage pathways that pertain to the experience and reenactment of God-as-Woman through contemporary art practice. For this reason affirmative 107 ethics, and affirmative action, such as consciousness raising, will be considered before identifying historical art sources that relate to the empowering vaginal imagery that appears in many of the artefacts in the exhibition In Her Hands (and will be discussed in further detail in Chapter Five).

This examination of vaginal iconography in relation to God-as-She will commence with artists who celebrate the worthiness of the generative capacity of women’s vaginas as a source of creation and/or God-as-Woman in keeping with a celebration of worth promoted by affirmative ethics. Artists such as Gustave Courbet, Monica Sjoo, and Judy Chicago are noted, as they have created a variety of artefacts that explore this theme, namely L’origine du monde, God Giving Birth, Birth Tear and Would God be Female? Inserted into this time line is the thought provoking work of Cynthia Mailman in her painting God, which is part of a larger work celebrating the divine as representative of women in The Sister Chapter. Deborah de Robertis uses disturbance as a way to engage with the viewer, in her performance Performing Origin of the World which questions the pornographic gaze. Mickalene Thomas plays with the concept of the vagina’s power to evoke an internal gaze from the viewer in Origin of the Universe 1. This concept of the interior gaze is suggestive of a passageway of time, and this moving concept of motion in and through the unseen interiority of a woman’s vagina is present in the artefacts of Lisa Tolcher and Anne Wolf, namely Journey into the Dark Inner Sanctum and Passage. These artists and their works, alongside other meaningful related artefacts, will be discussed.

As will be seen in the issues addressed by these artists, the vagina has a multiplicity of associations and connotations in contemporary art, including its correlations with scandal, exposure, pornography, and the objectifying male gaze, as well as feminist fear of accusations of essentialism. It is hoped that a thorough understanding of my long-durational performance as embodied research in motion moves not only myself but the reader/viewer towards affirming notions of God-as-She. Space is made for a sexuate definition of the divine which affirms alternate ways of interpreting the sacred. Finally this

108 chapter will end with a reflection on how exposure to aesthetic representations of woman divine impacted my long durational performance and the theoretical underpinnings of my PhD project.

Affirmative Ethics

Thealogy in all its forms has acted, and continues to act, as a form of consciousness that opposes patriarchal tendencies within many of the world faiths and spiritualities. Acting as a critique based resistance to the inharmonious and unbalanced system of inequity in many religions, thealogians have long since recognised the pain of not being witness or privy to a God that looks like them. This centres thealogy and a contemporary art practice that travels to alternative sites of gendered reverent terrain in discussions of affirmative ethics and affirmative action.

Rosi Braidotti interlaces nomadic theory with an ethics of becoming and ethics of sustainability in order to create new definitions for affirmative ethics and what affirmative action may become. Braidotti envisions affirmative ethics as the process of recognising something which is discomforting and painful, and developing a strategy of response which is based on endurance, survival, and sustainability in order to correct that which creates bad feelings.184 According to Braidotti:

Affirmative ethics is not about the avoidance of pain, but rather about the resignation, passivity that ensue from being hurt, lost, and dispossessed. One has to become ethical, as opposed to applying moral rules and protocols as a form of self protection; one has to endure.185

The spectrum of woman’s corporeality which is absent, lost and dispossessed from depictions and expressions of the divine is painful for myself and for many women who consider themselves to be spiritual, religious and/or desiring to have representation that is body positive in metaphysical and esoteric knowledge. Recognition of the absence of women’s materiality from the sacred led to the construction of theaology as a discipline within academia, as well as 109 the adoption of a practice led qualitative research method by feminisms which recognize that “knowledge grounded in bodily experience encompasses uncertainty, ambiguity, and messiness in everyday life, eschewing sanitized detached measurement of discrete variables.”186

Bodily experience which is based on sexuate self definition creates embedded research where the corporeality of that which is denied continues to be present. Research within the field of thealogy, religious studies, fine art and archaeology becomes a means in which the stance for equal corporeal representations of the divine can endure. Yet each researcher is not homogenised, as Laura Ellingson illuminates:

Embodied knowledge is inherently and unapologetically subjective, celebrating—rather than glossing over—the complexities of knowledge production. Fieldwork, interviewing, writing, and other qualitative methods involve embodied practices performed by actors occupying specific standpoints or positions within cultures. The researcher's body— where it is positioned, what it looks like, what social groups or classifications it is perceived as belonging to—matters deeply in knowledge formation.187

Acknowledging that whilst each researcher acts as a signifier of resistance, each researcher or academic also faces ethical rather than moral choices about what, how, where and when to produce and publish research.188 Questions of how to co-construct, interelate and contribute to both the cause of critique as well as consideration of those bracketed within the research subject ensures that a researcher does not speak for all whom identify with the question in focus, rather the researcher represents a subjective view which others may also identify with.189 Thus ideas, knowledge and sentiments of God-as-She are able to endure in “an unapologetically subjective manner”, despite cynicism, as each researcher ensures that God-as-Woman is ever present and continues to strive for an affirmative future for women who identify with the pain of being removed from depiction of the sacred.

110 The multitude of subjective researchers and practitioners enables a form of “ethics [that] is not about a master theory, but rather about multiple micro- political modes of daily activism. As we shall see, it is essential to put the ‘active’ back into activism.”190 Yet each researcher in thealogical studies, whether isolated or in collaboration, participates in a long standing defiant act of endurance designed to create new solutions for the overbearing presence of a male only God. These many ways of calling for a God that is corporeally expressive of the infinite ways in which one can be and become woman is reflected in the following definition by Braidotti where she states:

Affirmative ethics [is] based on the praxis of enduring by constructing positivity, thus propelling new social conditions and relations into being out of injury and pain. It actively constructs energy by transforming the negative charge of these experiences, even in intimate relationships where the dialectics of domination is at work.191

Transforming the masculine or patriarchal face of God into one that is identifiable for women represents the construction of positivity that enables a better future for ‘All.’192 Thus research in the field of thealogy takes on the personal impact of the ‘negative charge’ and transmutes it as noted above. This then means that each researcher must practice self care, as part of an ethics of sustainability in response to how to cope with or navigate the emotional and/or physical impact of negativity. Braidotti elucidates this further when she states:

The ethical subject is one that can bear this confrontation, cracking up a bit but without having its physical or affective intensity destroyed by it. Ethics consists in re-working the pain into threshold of sustainability, when and if possible: cracking, but holding it, still.

What is ethics, then? A thin barrier against the possibility of extinction. Ethics consists in re-working the pain into threshold of sustainability, when and if possible: cracking, but holding it, still. It is a mode of actualising sustainable forms of transformation.193

In regards to this PhD Project the actualised sustainable form is the long- durational nomadic pilgrimage I undertook, the exhibition as a recreation of a shrine like environment and the research presented in this exegesis. However

111 actualised sustainable forms may also take on the form of the previously discussed visionary journey in popular literature, autobiographies, journal articles, and text books. In this way thealogians create objects that can withstand the negative charge, overcoming the suppressive tendencies of a patriarchal depiction and understanding of the divine. The objects as well as the creator thus make up an action in the chain of consistent and visible resistance. These objects, whether textual or art-based, become artefacts in a possible positive future state where depictions of masculine and feminine as aspects of the divine are balanced. These objects thus become emblematic, representative of Elizabeth Grosz’s understanding of time which she explicates here:

Time’s capacity to hide within objects, through and as things in time, means that to the extent that we focus on the nature of objects, we obscure the nature of temporality. Although the evidence of its effects appears only on and as these objects in time, objects in their totality (through their various irreversible processes) and living beings in their particularity (through their development, aging and mortality) attest in a fundamental manner to its irresistable force.194

Interestingly this concept of a fourth dimension of time is ever present in pilgrimage where the pilgrim moves between worlds both spatially and temporally. In this way my movement as pilgrim, is also a form of active agency where I become as a “temporary disruption.”195 As do the following artists who explore their unique experience of and symbolic relationship to the corporeality of woman divine, including representations of the pubic triangle over time, not as a duplicate but as something which is personally meaningful to self. In this way the object and product of research becomes a form of affirmative action which will be discussed next.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative ethics can be defined as a form of resistance against negativity, where the conditions for possible positive new futures are actively created.196 They generate empowering alternatives to renegotiate the pain of otherness and discrimination through “a sort of orchestration of forces”.197 This creation of

112 conditions where new empowering alternatives and futures can be brought forth as a way of rectifying negatives are enhanced by and generated through individual and communal traits and byproducts, such as retrieving the past, meeting the new, destabilisation, disavowing, relational presence through engagement, self-celebration, worthiness, healing, creative becoming and wholeness.198 In short, Braidotti defines affirmative behaviours as the

…transmutation of negative into positive passions. It comes down to a question of creativity: affirmative ethical relations create possible forms of transformation of the negative by mobilizing resources that have been left untapped, including our desires and imagination.199

In relation to this PhD project, the negative is the lack of affirming aesthetic and textual representations of God-as-She within master narratives.200 In her pivotal works Laughter of Aphrodite and Diving Deep and Surfacing, Carol P. Christ directly addresses the need to counter insistent narratives of God-as-He. She visibly presents empowering alternatives and justifications for God-as-Woman in all of her academic works as a form of resistance to hegemonic understandings of God. In so doing, her life is an affirmation of thealogical alternatives.

Christ continuously addresses and provides exemplars of how personal stories reflect the theology at play in dominant cultural norms, arguing that “our stories reflect our orientation to the great power or powers that shape and bind our lives”.201 While the negative ripple effects of dominant ideology around the divine as male orientated have been discussed earlier, it is important to note here that my PhD project was actively designed as a moving homage of affirmation, tapping into creativity as a source point for affirmative action.202

Through research, embodied performance, and artefacts created in situ, I endeavoured to understand and add to the growing visual contributions of the expression of woman divine. This positioned resurgence in creative imagination, which expands affirming relationships between deity, landscape, and embodied

113 woman, is part of a recuperative revival tactic, as discussed in the Introduction.203

Yet, each historical aesthetic and textual representation of God-as-Woman can be seen as a form of self-representation in relational response to others and thus has often been met initially with resistance.204 Ruth Barrett summarises this reaction as one of repulsion, stating “people will call God anything [He or It] but She”.205 Christ aptly discusses this stigma:

If God-She made no difference to the way we understand divinity, humanity, and the world, re-introducing female language and imagery would not have caused such a stir.206

Before setting out on a multiplicity of pilgrimages as empowering acts, I needed to retrieve imagery of God-as-Woman from the past, metaphorically excavating representations of God-as-She from numerous sources to see what had caused the above-mentioned stir. Griselda Pollock queries “how a retrospect on feminist studies can shape our future?”207 This concept of recuperation through retrieval is not solely associated with feminist art. For example, the pre-Raphaelites similarly scanned the past in search of idealised relationships between nature and humanity as a way of reinstating that which no longer existed.208 Many feminist artists, likewise, sought out mythologies and depictions of God-as-She in ancient times to inspire and create new artefacts so that they may “rewrite, even improve the present”.209

Thus, as I dived deep in my revision, I witnessed and embraced alternative imagery that reinforced and validated ‘corrective’ understandings of God-as-She revered.210 Artefacts were generated by second-wave feminists as part of a canon of positive and affirming practices around the development of a new artistic vocabulary for goddess feminism.211 The potential for affirmative change through critical action propelled me forward as I absorbed myself in a visual discourse associated with woman divine as a way to ethically balance the traditional masculinist imagery of God.212

114

In this early phase of the research process, I was a singular subject enacting a performance of perceiving with intention.213 I employed critical optimism as I sought to reenact the aims of the consciousness-raising groups of second-wave feminism. 214 Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens call for transformation and change through a communal process where the new is apprehended through “collective imaginings”.215 The performativity of witnessing God-as-Woman circulated as a result of 1960s thealogians and those who came afterwards who actively posited for an understanding of woman divine. Their trailblazing revisions allowed me to lend my support both forwards and backwards in time, to a collective recuperation of deity as sexuate, ensuring that by my acting as witness that which had been created before would not be lost.

This process of balancing representations of God-as-Gendered and -Sexuate commenced with researching ecofeminist artists who considered the Earth as allegory for both women’s bodies and deity (Gaia), as exemplified by many artists whom I have already discussed. I also examined photographic documentation of real-life relics and talismans both on the web and in theoretical books before setting out on the pilgrimage path as an alternative form of subjectivity. In this way, even before I set out on my journey, I was both retrieving feminist responses to God-as-Woman from the past, as well as ‘meeting the new’ as I witnessed this counterbalancing imagery for the first time.

Moving through historical imagery as a process of exploration and re-discovery meant that I was situated in a desiring state of openness. This receptivity is considered a form of theoretical risk-taking, which Lauren Berlant discusses here:

The sharp edge of intellectual passion opens up what you can’t control; I love thought that welcomes the risk of formlessness, the unpredictable consequences of ideas. That’s what critical theory does when it is done well. Truisms are cut into, things come undone… Those who turn away from a scene of thought performed in unusual modes of critical intensity,

115 theoretical acumen, or referential familiarity miss an opportunity for surprise learning.216

As I contemplated the vast differences and ways that the representation of God- as-Woman have been made manifest in contemporary art and in situ, I became aware of depictions of God the Mother/God the Creatrix as figurative, sexuate, and reproductive. These were discomfortingly different to the “perpetual presence” of male-orientated representations of God I had been culturally inundated with.217 This speaks of the way that the images that will be presented here have been marginalised, eradicated, and often omitted from discussions in the art historical and/or feminist canon due to social taboos and, later, feminist fear of associations with essentialism.218 Initially, I was hesitant to look at images that signified female sexual and reproductive potency due to the possibility of a fixed essentialist interpretation.219

However, motherhood, whether it be biological, adoptive, or taking the form of unofficially recognised mothering of others and/or mothering one’s self, was one of the many sexuate attributes associated with God-as-She. Luce Irigaray argues that a language of the maternal is intrinsic to being a woman:

We are all mothers just by being women. We bring many things into the world apart from children: love, desire, language, art, social things, political things, religious things… We must take back this maternal creative dimension that is our birth right.220

This manifestation of deity as identified in the woman’s form, shape, and characteristics immediately brings attention to the female body and respective sex organs. Ann Loades suggests that while women share common experiences influenced by class, race, culture, religious identity and social status,221 they are “bound by a unity of experience”,222 a bodily based experience that constructivist feminists have critiqued as essentialist. They argue that this identification replicates not only patriarchal reductions to woman’s biology but has also marked patriarchal ideals of physical ability and/or beauty.

116 The story of feminism, with its division into decades and political alliances, is however exemplary of a dualism and an internal polarisation that Clare Hemmings calls a “double story”—a story that is an oversimplification of “different areas of feminist thought and the contests over meaning that characterise feminist debate at all points of its history”.223 In this way, theoretical research is now no longer open and wide-ranging but rather divisionist, guarded, and closed. Jennifer McWeeny states:

Because of risks of essentialism and homogenization, feminist theorists frequently avoid making precise ontological claims, especially in regard to specifying bodily connections and differences among women. However well-intentioned, this trend may actually run counter to the spirit of intersectionality by shifting feminists’ attention away from embodiment, fostering oppressor-centric theories, and obscuring privilege within feminism. What feminism needs is not to turn from ontological specificity altogether, but to engage a new kind of ontological project that can account for the material complexity of social space in the twenty-first century.224

Affirmative feminist research is often suppressed because embodiment is reduced to essentialism in social constructivist theory. As theorist Marysia Zaleswki points out, this approach mirrors the very dualism that feminist theory is based on resisting; the subordination of mind to body, women to men, feminine to masculine, femininity to masculinity and female to male, “or a combination of some or all of these”.225 This is then replicated in the dual story of feminism as noted above, where subordination and suppression of women’s voices is occurring within feminisms.

As such, I was apprehensive about considering the sexual organs and reproductive potential of God-as-Woman within an academic research setting.226 Yet, it was also necessary to be witness to these artefacts to shift attention toward a spectrum of woman’s corporeal sexuate capabilities as individuated, intersectional, highly empowering, and self-protective in order for woman divine to be visible in academic currency today.227 Using my research as lived experience and as performance, I proffered a materiality of woman divine in

117 aesthetic language and thinking as memorial, reenactment, and renewal, and as a way to come to know the body through self-celebration. According to Irigaray:

Self-affection today needs a return to our body, our own breath, a care about our life in order not to become subjected to technologies, to money, to power, to neutralization in a universal ‘someone’, to assimilation into an anonymous world, to the solitude of universalism.228

Avoiding the pubic triangle by shunning or leaving it unaccounted for did not make space for self-celebration of the sexuate body I was designated with at birth and identify with. The act of witnessing and considering imagery of ‘God the Mother’ was a challenge borne from limited representations of the female body in states of physical and reproductive activity both in artefacts and mainstream representations of woman.229 Lauren Gurrieri, Josephine Previte, and Jan Brace-Govan argue that previous aesthetic representations of women’s lived experiences have been met with “stigmatisation and exclusion”.230 More so they highlight:

The imagery personifies female power, offering women symbols of wholeness and integration; whether the Goddess exists 'out there' is an irrelevant if not illegitimate question, because of feminist suspicion of dogma and creed.231

The imagery personifying female power that Gurrieri, Previte, and Brace-Govan allude to include menstrual blood, the placenta, eggs, womb shapes, and other symbolic and real-life indicators of women’s bodily functions and processes. For example, images of the nativity where the Virgin Mary’s water (amniotic sac) breaks, the moments of placental expulsion, or the act of wiping off the birth mucus from baby Jesus for the first suckle of breastfeeding are missing.232 Instead, highly polished, culturally acceptable versions of childbirth that in no way mirror the reality of any woman’s experience are presented. Often, the focus is on the generational male offspring rather than on the power of the female’s fertile potential.

Empowerment through Sexuate Aesthetics. 118

Many goddess feminists and ecofeminist artists have identified the lack of real- life representations of women in powerful stances in images of God. Through developing new artefacts that depict God-as-Woman in revered bodily form, and in active physical states of agency, the artists referred to below have generated “self-esteem” and “empowerment” around woman-specific bodily functions and performance.233 This aesthetic approach to present women in relation to biology and anatomical possibilities is a rectification, tribute, and counteraction to the sexism and prejudice in religious art that Christina L. H. Traina summarises:

Where is a god that is depicted experiencing ovulation, menstruation, intercourse, pregnancy, labor, childbirth, breastfeeding, and weaning? All are sexual events, potentially pleasurable but also potentially or necessarily (and potentially simultaneously) painful.234

According to Heather Rasinski and Alexander Czopp, confrontation can reduce prejudice in both the perpetrator and observers if it is not specifically directed at a stand-alone target.235 Narrowly focusing on and confronting a specific target by “expressing dissatisfaction” can often be perceived as complaining rather than voicing “disapproval and criticism” which can be considered constructive approaches to rectifying inequalities. 236 A broad approach invites alternative empowering strategies such as remembrance and active imagination, which, in this case, is the development of new narratives through both visual and story- based depictions of an alternative female God in a multiplicity of locales. Therefore, I have sought to generate an effective strategy by “influencing others’ future behaviors” and attitudes in relation to women, deity, and landscape in all forms.237

Aware of the negative criticisms of essentialism from some academics, I continued with my visual review, intending that by seeking out imagery of God- as-Woman, including ‘God the Mother’ instead of the ‘mother of God’, I was affirming the multivalent generative potential of a God-as-She as an affirmation and a counterbalance.238 I met my discomforting inner resistance. I experienced

119 painful and uncertain feelings, which Braidotti associates with the ethics of affirmative action, in revising, collating and interpreting the images of God-as- Woman that I discovered in my research.239 Braidotti clarifies:

Dis-identification involves pain. It is the pain of the loss of cherished habits of thought and representation, which can produce fear, a sense of insecurity and nostalgia. Change is certainly a painful process. If it were not so, more people may actually be tempted to try it out. This does not, however, equate it with suffering and hence acquire necessarily negative connotations. To believe this would be a politically conservative position which, as I stated earlier, is not my aim. What I want to stress is the difficulties and pain involved in the quest for transformative ethics and politics and to raise an awareness of both the complexities and the paradoxes involved in the process of striving for social change. Changes that affect one’s sense of identity are especially delicate. Given that identifications constitute an inner scaffolding that supports one’s sense of identity, shifting our imaginary identifications is not as simple as casting away a used garment.240

While an example of imagery subject to much feminist criticism for its objectifying thought and representation, which L'origine du monde (The Origin of the World) of 1866 can be reinterpreted as a relevant cultural representation of the vagina and is aptly titled, aligning with Mother Earth thealogy (figure 33). With this work, Courbet created a new visual vocabulary, celebrating the anatomy of women’s sexuate bodies. Yet, he was not able to transcend taboos around representing the outer labia or clitoris, as it was not permissible to paint even pubic hair at the time.241 Relying heavily on amber tones to soften the genital encounter and to side-step pornographic associations, L'origine du monde still provoked shock, especially because the face and gaze of the model are absent, thereby heightening the focus on the vagina.242 As a result, the painting, despite being widely known, was rarely available for public view until its acquisition in 1995 by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.243

120 Figure 33 Gustave Courbet, L'origine du monde [The Origin of the World] 1866, oil on canvas, 46 x 55cm. Photo courtesy RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski.

121 Art’s offending of accepted behaviours is analysed by Michael Kammen, whom observes:

Conflict can certainly be stressful, push people (ranging from artists to museum administrators) into serious situations, and agitate civil society. Yet conflict can also be enlightened and educational, at least in retrospect, especially when individuals modify their mind-sets or better still, have a change of heart.244

The female God (1977, figure 34) by Cynthia Mailman, occupies the foreground of the canvas, positioned so that the viewer gazes up into the vagina, which blocks the glare of the encompassing sun. The solar light is a motif reminiscent of creativity and energy, located behind Her head with its associations as the light of the mind.245 This image integrates both shock and reverence. The confronting nature of looking up into the vaginal cavity is combined with a focus on the golden rays highlighting the head. This work can be interpreted as using shock to cast aside derogatory reactions and instead to educate the viewer on the body– mind spectrum present in depictions of God-as-Woman. This promotes a holistic approach to God-as-She, mentally astute, strong, and capable. Christ addresses this spectrum as follows:

As a feminist, I value my mind and my body and the body–mind continuum. While I value other than rational ways of knowing, I do not consider intellect, reflection, and rational thinking to be in any way alien to my woman-self. I believe that intelligence is found to varying degrees in all living things and in all individuals in the web of life.246

This concept of mind and body as not oppositional but rather interrelational and equal is expressed in Kimsooja’s sewn work Mind of the Mother Earth (1992, figure 35). While the title points to a holistic integration of a cognitive body, where the corporeal is cognitive, Kimsooja extends these ideas by using similar threads, ink, and once-worn textiles to represent both states as equal and connected.

122 Figure 34 Cynthia Mailman, God 1977, acrylic on canvas, 274.32 x 152.4cm. Photo courtesy Karen Mauch Photography and Rowan University.

123 Figure 35 Kimsooja, Mind of the Mother Earth 1992, thread, ink on used cloth, 270 x 217cm. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio.

124 Mailman’s God is not a stand-alone work but is one of eleven nine-feet canvases and a painted ceiling that were enshrined within a textile chapel, titled The Sister Chapel, exhibited at P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York, in 1978 (figure 36). The result of a four-year-long cohesive feminist collaboration conceptualised by Ilise Greenstein in the early 1970s, The Sister Chapel was devised as a response to rectify the myopia and lack of imagery pertaining to God-as-Woman in The Sistine Chapel.247

Through their canvases, Mailman, Alice Neel, June Blum, Betty Holliday, Shirley Gorelick, May Stevens, Elsa M. Goldsmith, Sylvia Sleigh, Diana Kurz, Martha Edelheit, and Sharon Wybrants put together an eclectic collage of concepts of God-as-She, including role models, heroes, self-portraits, and deities.248 Greenstein synthesised the installation through unifying features such as the use of a textile enclosure, standardised canvases, and by asking each artist to depict God-as-Woman in a standing position.249 This stance illustrates power and sovereignty. The freedom given to the contributors allowed The Sister Chapel to exemplify a “non-hierarchical” context for art making in a social activist context.250 Maureen Connor designed the fabric chapel in 1978 (but it was only made in 2015-2016), placing emphasis on draping and tapering, using crimson and white to highlight both the transcendental purity of women, and the colour of blood (figure 37).251

Responsible for the ceiling, Greenstein decided upon an abstract rather than figurative approach, positioning a circular cut-out of Mylar to symbolise a mirror in the centre of the ceiling (figure 38). Greenstein surrounded this with fragments of canvases stitched together, mimicking quilting techniques. Upon each canvas, Greenstein used a soak-staining technique, where high flow acrylics are poured onto unprimed canvases (a technique I was to use in the construction of Petition Tree, figures 65-69 Chapter 5, In Her Hands). The openness afforded through the lack of figurative detail and the implied reflections of the paintings in the Mylar allowed Greenstein to reference “the seasons in a woman’s life from birth to death; sunrise to sunset expressed metaphorically”.252

125 Figure 36, The Sister Chapel, installed at Rowan University Art Gallery West, Glassboro, NJ. Photo courtesy Andrew D. Hottle and Rowan University Art Gallery.

Figure 37 Maureen Connor, The Sister Chapel Structure designed 1976, fabricated 2015–16, nylon and velour over PVC framework, 7.62m. diameter. Photo courtesy Andrew D. Hottle and Rowan University Art Gallery.

126 Figure 38 Ilise Greenstein, Ceiling of The Sister Chapel 1976, acrylic on canvas, reflective vinyl, 548 × 528.32cm. Photo courtesy Rowan University Art Gallery.

127 Dr Andrew D. Hottle, in The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration, identifies two prominent ways that The Sister Chapel equalises the intensely patriarchal imagery of The Sistine Chapel. Firstly, the installation favours multiple artists rather than celebrating one distinct artist of renown (Michelangelo) and, secondly, a uniform aesthetic principle was shunned in support of personal contributions, granting a higher degree of personal privilege than normally afforded in collaboration at that time in herstory.253

Crimson velvet, white nylon, and a PVC frame enhance the chapel, shaped as a twelve-pointed star in which the paintings are encased (figure 37). The interior has a feeling reminiscent of a circle, which was designed to create a feeling of sisterhood.254 The overriding installation is a tribute to the intimate and inspired search each artist went through in order to create a visual reflection of an alternative-gendered God. Greenstein notes of her initial query into generating The Sister Chapel:

I began to question: where was woman in man’s relationship to God? It’s a perfectly normal question. Where was I? ...Where was Eve? I began to question the Michelangelo concept. … And so I retold the myth of creation from a woman’s point of view.255

This recreation of non-normative, non-hierarchical depictions of God-as-She is generative. Each artist affirms her own understanding of self and of her relationship to the sacred through the process of art production. “This chapel then, is not about the creation of man, but the birth of woman.”256

Equally bold and more directly related to motherhood is Monica Sjoo’s God Giving Birth (1965, figure 39), painted nearly a century after The Origin of the World.257 Sjoo’s painting was the first depiction of God-as-Woman giving birth to the Earth as representative of the “unified whole of nature”.258 Here, body politics are also at play: Sjoo depicts a woman giving birth while standing, with a child’s head emerging from her, hovering over the curve of the Earth. Her pulsations

128 Figure 39 Monica Sjoo, God Giving Birth 1968, oil on hardboard, 183 x 122cm, photo credit Nina Monastra. Photo courtesy Museum Anna Nordlander, Skelleftea, Sweden.

129 occur in the body, a sexuate form divided into two distinct parts as a way of reflecting the imposed dualism that male-orientated normative narratives of God inscribe on woman’s flesh. God’s head is positioned among the planets, as if her mind encompasses the stars.259 Implicit in the image is the powerful birth stance that God embodies; straddling the Earth and stars, her figure exists through time and space where ultimately God births the Earth. This image becomes representative of a thealogy of what “women do and say”.260 The actions afforded by biology are intertwined here with thealogical belief. Yet, Sjoo positions God in a premeditated position. God stands here dignified, strong, and capable of birthing and sustaining life.

Similarly power-centred is Judy Chicago’s Would God Be Female? Woven by Audrey Cowan in 1982 (figure 40), the textile resonates with primal life force, emanations of energy mirroring the shape and the form of woman’s body in a potent birth stance. The work was incorporated into an exhibit at the Textile Museum of Canada in 2009 as part of a four-banner installation titled When Women Rule the World (figure 41). Chicago recuperated this artefact through its inclusion in a series of sequential inquiries, showing the relevancy of an image across divisive decades of feminist thought:

"What If Women Ruled the World?" asks the first banner, followed by "Would God Be Female?"; "Would There Be Equal Parenting?" and ends with the echo: "What If Women Ruled the World?"261

Chicago’s Birth Project (1982, figure 42), consisting of embroideries, weavings and paintings, created in collaboration with 150 needle workers, features scenes specifically of women in a schemata of birth poses.262 They depict multiple positions of labour, with a focus on the vulval cavity.263 Chicago writes, “I was particularly struck by the strength of the vulva as it expanded and contracted in childbirth; its power was overwhelming.”264 Using conceptual and symbolic imagery to pivot traditional thinking around women and birth, Chicago draws on experiential, autobiographical, and alternative understandings of childbirth she has gleaned from often being witness to the birthing process firsthand.265

130 Figure 40 Judy Chicago, Would God Be Female? 1982, textile banner, 91.4 x 61cm, textile woven by Audrey Cowan. Photo credit Donald Woodman. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 41 Judy Chicago, When Women Rule the World 2009, four banners 91.4 x 61cm each, textiles woven by Audrey Cowan. Installation view at the Textile Museum of Canada. Photo credit Jill Kitchener. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

131 Figure 42 Judy Chicago, Birth Tear 1982 (detail of the Birth Project), embroidery on silk, 50.8 x 69cm, embroidered by Jane Gaddie Thompson. Photo credit Donald Woodman. © 2017 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

132 Birth Project emphasises radical presence, endurance, and a reclamation of women’s body politics, self-actualisation and links with divine creation as possible for women through the potential of childbirth.266 Women’s divine and metaphysical interconnections with and through birthing are emphasised in this work, made strikingly evident through both the symbolic imagery (labyrinths focusing on the vulva, open thighs) and individual titles such as Guided by the Goddess, Birth Goddess, In the Beginning, The Creation, Mother India, and Birth Trinity.

Unifying Courbet, Mailman, Sjoo, and Chicago’s depictions and aesthetic references to God-as-Woman is the concept of the vagina as an entry point, a gateway that accesses organic creation. The significance placed on genitalia, including the figurative and abstract use of vulva iconography in these artefacts, is symbolically prominent. Judy Chicago casts light on this metaphor:

The vulval image could act as a visual symbol for the physically defining characteristic of woman in an almost metaphysical sense; that is, an entryway into an aesthetic exploration of what it has meant to be a woman—experientially, historically, and philosophically.267

This core motif is also adopted by Deborah de Robertis in Performing Origin of the World (2014, figure 43), where she revitalises Courbet’s painting through performance. While de Robertis’s performance can also be considered to question the history of the gaze inside institutional settings, what I am interested in here is how she provides an anatomical correction to Courbet’s L'origine du monde (figure 33) by revealing the fullness of her vagina and in doing so strains to show its ‘eye,’ which she acknowledges in an article by Benjamin Sutton:

There is a gap in art history, the absent point of view of the object of the gaze. In his realist painting, the painter shows the open legs, but the vagina remains closed. He does not reveal the hole, that is to say, the eye. I am not showing my vagina, but I am revealing what we do not see in the painting, the eye of the vagina, the black hole, this concealed eye, this chasm, which, beyond the flesh, refers to infinity, to the origin of the origin.268

133 Figure 43 Deborah de Robertis, Performing Mirror of Origin 2014, unsolicited performance in front of Gustave Courbet, The Origin of the World 1866, at the RMN-Grand Palais, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Video still courtesy the artist.

134 De Robertis’s Performing Origin of the World has been associated with exhibitionism, voyeurism, pornography, and denounced as “shameless provocation”.269 Highlighting the subtle line between pornography and self- celebration of the sexual organs, Melissa Raphael argues that it is important to look beyond these impositions and rather consider that the “recovery of the female body and female symbolism in a post patriarchal context is not simply a reinscribing of patriarchal conceptions of the female body and the feminine”.270 Instead, “symbols are borrowed from a mythical past to give birth to something radically new”.271

Revisioning the Vagina

This concept of rebirthing something old in the case of Courbet, de Robertis, and Mickalene Thomas’s Origin of the Universe 1 (2012, figure 44) is a turning of the viewer’s gaze inward, exploring ideas of “feminine identity, sexuality, beauty, and power”.272 Thomas created three versions of L'origine du monde, each one oscillating between genital representations of her lover or herself on their crushed shared bedsheets in positions emulating Courbet’s original model. By using her lover, herself, and their shared bed linen as sources of inspiration, Thomas draws on the personal, returning to the self as the original origin.273 This is a way of ‘celebrating beauty’. Thomas is intrigued by the way the body and personal space are interconnected,274 moving the act of viewing to an inward gaze and away from modes promoted by patriarchy and its subset of pornography.275 The patriarchal gaze perceives woman as object.276 Pornographic modes of visual perception can become authoritarian and may exploit others, especially women.277 Jane Caputi considers the oppressive nature of the pornographic gaze:

By pornography I definitely do not mean all sexually explicit and arousing materials. Rather, I mean sexually explicit materials that purvey and survey a feminized subject who becomes the object of a domineering and possessive phallic presence and gaze.278

135 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 44 Mickalene Thomas, Origin of the Universe 1 2012, rhinestones, acrylic, oil, and enamel on wood panel, 152.4 x 121.92cm. Collection of the Hudgins Family, New York.

136 Instead, Courbet, de Robertis, and Thomas invite a new reading of a woman’s vulval cavity; one where the viewer is invited to use the possibilities of the gaze to consider bold anatomy and look within it in order to see the place from where organic human life stems. These works are a mythic revisioning of the Sheela na gig (figure 45), an ancient bas-relief or sculpture that depicts a woman defiantly prising open her vagina. The gesture of stretching open and making the inside of the vagina visible is a symbolic suggestion of the pulsations of life that occur during the sustaining of life in the womb, as described previously by Chicago, and of a connection to the Motherline whereby organic human life can be traced back through and within woman.

Louise Tondeur writes, “Examining my own pubic hair symbolically requires me to return to the place of my own birth and to go back into myself.”279 Her close up looking and coming to know the part of herself that is most often concealed and taboo is an invitational process of rebirth, one arterially linked to L'origine du monde and images of Sheela na gig, which “celebrates the circle of a woman’s life: we emerge from our mother’s vulvas, as adults we can give birth to ourselves”.280 This chrysalis is also evidenced in Jana Brike’s Gardener and the Centre of the Universe (2016, figure 46) where the painting depicts butterflies surrounding a sexually self-celebrated vagina.

Yet, Tondeur also speaks beyond self-transformation and expresses a process whereby through self-receptivity, revealing, and going within, she transcends anatomy and her attention is redirected outward to take in the possibilities of what the vagina is capable of as the source of creation, as aptly expressed in Courbet’s title.281 The vagina comes to link one birth and the many. A direct link is made with an external divine that exists between all living things, thereby connecting to a longer historical line of which one is a part. Marilou Awiakta states:

137 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 45 An example of a Sheela na gig (12th century) at the Cavan County Museum, Ireland. Photo credit Barry James Duff.

138 Figure 46 Jana Brike, Gardener and The Centre of the Universe 2016, oil painting, 30 x 30cm. Photo courtesy the artist.

139 A celebration of the sexual cosmologies, which can still be found in cultural performances and ritual acts, is a means of countering this domination. So too is the process of speaking from the vulva; reclaiming the female genitals as a source of intelligent power that both manifest in and signify the creative forces that animate the universe.282

The link between the metaphysical and the corporeal as symbolised by the vagina is reinforced through a visual language for God-as-Woman generated by second-wave feminists, yet these motifs continue to be present in contemporary feminist art today. The hole, egg, yoni, vulva, nest, blossom and spiral are signifiers of sexuate affirmation. Both Valerie de la Dehesa’s womb flowers (2010, figures 47 and 48) and Petrina Hicks’s Venus (2013, figure 49) pay tribute to spiral, fertility, and vulval iconography. Hicks states:

The earliest representations of women in art strongly relate around one thing, the female as life giver, fertility and childbirth … The conch shell is symbolic of fertility across many cultures. The spiral formation of the conch shell also alludes to the Fibonacci sequence that appears in nature as the underlying form of growing patterns.283

Anish Kapoor’s L'origine du monde’s (2004, figure 50) use of a black egg-shaped form positioned above the viewer allows one to feel as if one is gazing up into the vaginal cavity, having just been birthed from it, while Georgia O’Keeffe’s Iris (1926, figure 51), with its black hole, is beckoning, a way of being sucked through and down into a passage. As Amelia Jones articulates on O’Keeffe:

She painted a haunting mysterious passage through the black portal of an iris, making the first recognised step into the darkness of female identity… she painted out of an urgency to understand her own being and to communicate as yet unknown information about being a woman. 284

The female sex organ as threshold implies motion, a means of stepping from one state into another. Lisa Tolcher identifies the blind motion afforded by the interiority of the vaginal cavity in Journey into the Dark Inner Sanctum (2015, figure 52). A metaphoric gendered geography explored by Susan Griffin when she writes:

140 Figure 47 Valerie de la Dehesa, Spiral Uterus Flower 2010, printed by plotter on double weight Fabricio paper, digital print 50x60 cm. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 48 Valerie de la Dehesa, Giant Uterus Flower 2010, pink stretch fabric, 15 x 3m. Installation and performance Bosque las encinas, Madrid. Photo courtesy the artist.

141 Figure 49 Petrina Hicks, Venus 2013, pigment print, 100 x 100cm. Photo courtesy of Rockhampton Art Gallery, Queensland.

142 Figure 50 Anish Kapoor, L'origine du monde 2004, 700cm (length along oval’s major axis), concrete and pigment, installed at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. Image courtesy the artist. © Anish Kapoor, 2017 line.

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 51 Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris 1926, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 75.9cm.

Figure 52 Lisa Tolcher, Journey into the Dark Inner Sanctum 2015, wool, plastic, wire, acrylic, 300 x 50 x 60cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.

143 The shape of a cave, we say, the shape of a labyrinth. The way we came here was dark. Space seemed to close in on us. We thought we could not move forward. We had to shed our clothes.285

Each artefact discussed here is a gateway, symbolic of the way that life flows in and out from the cavity. The birthing process is one of the first pilgrimages one takes, an ultimate journey of spirit into form. In spite of gender-based stereotyping, the vulva becomes hyperbolised as a symbol of self-affirmation.286 The pubic form as a motif of sexuate orientation can then be used to increase women’s self-esteem in direct response to sexism and prejudice.287

Yet, regardless of era, the aesthetic representations of woman divine that I identified were, in palpable form, new for me. By approaching and witnessing contemporary artefacts that identified God-as-Woman, I had new corporeal sensations and responses as I witnessed this aesthetic language of the reverent for the first time.

‘Meeting the new’ is an affirmative act that Maria Harris identifies as specific to women’s spirituality.288 Being able to place one’s self in previously unknown situations and terrains is an empowering act of risk-taking, exposure, involvement, and disengagement. To encounter the new, I enacted a process of dis-identifying with the familiar, the comforting, and the supportive networks that bolster the status quo.289 By moving outside of normative spheres, desire maintains and supports the experience of the new as differentiation.290 In the case of this PhD project, desire, enacted through practical contact with historical sources as well as current aesthetic revisions of God-as-Woman, provided the momentum to claim that which has been absent, unseen, lost, and forgotten, but is currently being revitalised.

By realigning the theoretical underpinnings of this research with depictions of God-as-Maternal and -Sexuate, I crossed numerous thresholds and entered multimodal passageways. I discovered that theory meshed with landscape, and sites of devotion were experienced as multivalenced, with many celebrating

144 sexuate difference. For example, through the many phases of pregnancy made visible in stalactites inside a cave in Crete, or the way in which I lowered my body into holes, caves, Neolithic excavations or shrines symbolic of entering the blackened space of the womb, or the aerial view of Mesa (a temple for Aphrodite, situated at the centre point of a bay which, from the air, looks like a womb). All of these observations make more concrete the connection between the sexuate body and the Earth evoked by ecofeminist artists. This sense of being held within the Earth and yet moving into and from it is exemplified in ecofeminist artefacts such as Anne Wolf’s Earth Cradles (1997–2003, figure 53) and Passage (exhibited in 1997, Figure 54).

In moving between and at pilgrimage sites I noticed that woman’s body as the potential for organic creation passes between states of performativity that dissolve into anatomical identification. My body as sensing instrument interpreted both artefacts and newly revised gendered locales of reverence and the spaces between as sexuately inhabited. I engaged thought and senses to understand what was occurring corporeally and cognitively within and outside the body, generating a holistic flourishing where I synthesised sensation and perception, body and mind as I met the new.

145 Figure 53 Anne Wolf, Earth Cradles 1997–2003, stitched burlap, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist and Chatham College, Pittsburgh PA.

Figure 54 Anne Wolf, Passage 1997, mixed media installation. Photo courtesy the artist and Hewlett Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

146 182 Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, 220. 183 Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004): 244. 184 Blaagaard, Bolette and Iris van der Tuin. eds. The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 185 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Elemental Complexity and Relational Vitality: The Relevance of Nomadic Thought for Contemporary Science,’ in The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy, ed. Peter Gaffney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010): 226. 186 Laura Ellingson, “Embodied Knowledge,” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (Vol. 2), ed. Lisa. M. Given (Thousand Oaks, USA: SAGE Publications: 2008): 245. 187 Ibid. 188 Edward Wray-Bliss, “Research Subjects/Research Subjections: Exploring the Ethics and Politics of Critical Research,” Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society 10, no. 2 (2003): 307-325. 189 Ibid., 308. 190 Rosi Braidotti, “The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible” in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006): 133-134. 191 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Posthuman Affirmative Politics’ in Resisting Biopolitics: Philosophical, Political, and Performative Strategies, ed. S.E. Wilmer, and Audrone Žukauskaite (New York: Routledge, 2016): 52. 192 Carol P. Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later," Feminist Theology 20, no. 3 (2012). 193 Rosi Braidotti, “The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible,” in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006): 141 194 Grosz, The Nick of Time, 244. 195 Lieven De Cauter, Ruben De Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouk, eds. Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization. Rotterdam: NAi 2011. 196 Rosi Braidotti, "Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment," Asian Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 3 (2016). 197 Ibid., 11. 198 Maria Harris, Dance of the Spirit: The Seven Steps of Women's Spirituality (New York: Bantam Books, 1991). 199 Braidotti, "Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment," 11. 200 Erika Hasebe-Ludt, "A Love Song to Our Pluriverse: Life Writing as Cosmopolitan Motherwise Text," Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 7, no. 2 (2010); Francesca Parmeggiani, "Speaking of God: The Post-Secular Challenge for Italian Feminist Thought and Practices," Annali d'Italianistica 29, no. Italian Critical Theory (2011). 201 Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, 11. 202 Braidotti, "Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment," 11. 203 Ibid., 8. 204 Theory and History UCL Centre for Cultural Analysis, "Ucl History of Art: Griselda Pollock - Making Feminist Memories - Part 1, Making Feminist Memories: Woman in Art: From Type to Personality by Helen Rosenau," in Research Seminars UCL History of Art department (UCL School of Art, Hisory and Cultural Studies, 2014). 205 Kristy S. Coleman, "Who's Afraid of 'the Goddess Stuff'?," Feminist Theology 13, no. 2 (2005): 227. 206 Carol P. Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later," Feminist Theology 20, no. 3 (2012): 254. 207 Griselda Pollock, "Notes from a Feminist Front," in The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts (MoMA Multimedia: MoMA, 2007). 208 Halsall. Alison, "H.D. And the Victorian Spectres of "White Rose and the Red"," College Literature 38, no. 4 (Fall) (2011): 116–17. 209 Ibid., 117. 210 Lauren Berlant, "Critical Inquiry, Affirmative Culture," Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 445; Carol P. Christ, Diving Deep & Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980).

147 211 Daniel Belasco, "Size Matters: Notes on the Triumph of Feminist Art," Lillith (Fall 2010); Lillian S. Robinson, "Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 2, no. 1 (Spring 1983); Hilary Robinson, "Feminism Meets the Big Exhibition: 2005 Onwards," Anglo Saxonica 3, no. 6 (2013). 212 This can also be historically associated with replicating consciousness-raising groups of second wave feminism where women shared imagery of Goddess, which were personally meaningful to them in regular group meetings. 213 Marlies Kronegger and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Aesthetics of Enchantment in the Fine Arts, ed. William S. Smith and Daniela Verducci, vol. LXV, Analecta Husserliana, the Yearbook of Phenomenological Research (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2000). 214 Rosi Braidotti, "Powers of Affirmation: Response to Lisa Baraitser, Patrick Hanafin and Clare Hemmings," Subjectivity 3, no. 2 (2010). 215 cited in Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, 83. 216 Berlant, "Critical Inquiry, Affirmative Culture," 447. 217 Ralph W Emerson, Nature, the Conduct of Life and Other Essays (London: Dent, 1963), 6. 218 UCL Centre for Cultural Analysis, "UCL History of Art: Griselda Pollock - Making Feminist Memories - Part 1, Making Feminist Memories: Woman in Art: From Type to Personality by Helen Rosenau."; Robinson, "Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon." 219 Jane Caputi, "The Naked Goddess: Pornography and the Sacred," Theology and Sexuality 9, no. 2 (2003). 220 Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, 18. 221 Maggie McFaddon, "Introduction," NWSA Journal 12, no. 1 (2000): vii. 222 Jeff Astley, David Brown, and Ann Loades, Problems in Theology, Creation, a Reader (London, UK: T&T Clark, A Continuum Imprint 2003), 59. 223 Clare Hemmings, "Telling Feminist Stories," Feminist Theory 6, no. 2 (2005): 116. 224 Jennifer McWeeny, "Topographies of Flesh: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference," Hypatia 29, no. 2 (2014): 269. 225 Marysia Zalewski, "‘I Don't Even Know What Gender Is’: A Discussion of the Connections between Gender, Gender Mainstreaming and Feminist Theory," Review of International Studies 36, no. 01 (2010): 5. 226 Ibid.; Clare Hemmings, "Affective Solidarity: Feminist Reflexivity and Political Transformation," Feminist Theory 13, no. 2 (2012); Naomi van Stapele, "Intersubjectivity, Self- Reflexivity and Agency: Narrating About ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in Feminist Research," Women's Studies International Forum 43 (2014). 227 Julie Spencer-Rodgers et al., "The Power of Affirming Group Values: Group Affirmation Buffers the Self-Esteem of Women Exposed to Blatant Sexism," Self and Identity 15, no. 4 (2016). 228 Irigaray, In the Beginning She Was, 161. 229 Lauren Gurrieri, Josephine Previte, and Jan Brace-Govan, "Women’s Bodies as Sites of Control: Inadvertent Stigma and Exclusion in Social Marketing," Journal of Macromarketing 33 no. 2 (2012). 230 Ibid., 128. 231 Dorothy A. Lee, "Goddess Religion and Women's Spirituality: A Christian Feminist Response," Theology 102 (1999): 21; see also Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections," 120–31; Melissa Raphael, Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Wiltshire, UK: Sheffield Academic Press Limited, 1996), 16. 232 Alexandra M. Kokoli, Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). 233 Sarah J. Gervais, Amy L. Hillard, and Theresa K. Vescio, "Confronting Sexism: The Role of Relationship Orientation and Gender," Sex Roles 63 (2010): 463. 234 Cristina L. H. Traina, "Maternal Experience and the Boundaries of Christian Sexual Ethics," Signs 25, no. 2 (2000): 383. 235 Heather M. Rasinski and & Alexander M. Czopp, "The Effect of Target Status on Witnesses' Reactions to Confrontations of Bias," Basic and Applied Social Psychology 32 (2010). 236 Robin M. Kowalski, "Complaints and Complaining: Functions, Antecedents, and Consequences," Psychological bulletin 119, no. 2 (1996): 179.

148 237 Alexander M. Czopp, "The Passive Activist: Negative Consequences of Failing to Confront Antienvironmental Statements," EcoPsychology 5, no. 1 (2013): 17. 238 Laura Corradi, " The Body of the Goddess: Women’s Trans-National and Cross-Religion Eco- Spiritual Activism," Societies Without Borders 6, no. 3 (2011). 239 Rosi Braidotti. "Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment." Asian Journal of Women's Studies 14, no. 3 (2016). 240 Ibid., 19. 241 Ramon Jr. Pinon, Friction and Fantasy: Opening Pandora's Box (Houston, TX: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co., 2014). 242 Emma L. E. Rees, The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). 243 "Gustave Courbet: L'origine Du Monde [the Origin of the World]," Musée d'Orsay, http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in- focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/the-origin-of-the-world-3122.html. 244 Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 2006), xii. 245 Laurie Johnston, "The ‘Sister Chapel': A Feminist View of Creation," The New York Times, 30 January 1978, B1. 246 Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later," 252. 247 Samantha Melamed, "After 35 Years, Lost Feminist Art Back on Display," The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/20160330_After_35_years__lost_feminist_art _back_on_display.html. 248 Johnston, "The ‘Sister Chapel': A Feminist View of Creation." 249 Andrew D. Hottle, "The Sister Chapel: An Essential Feminist Collaboration," ed. Rowan University Art Gallery West (Glassboro, NJ: Rowan University, 2016). 250 Ilene Sova, "Feminist Art Conference," http://ilenesova.com/fac/. 251 Hottle, "The Sister Chapel: An Essential Feminist Collaboration," 11. 252 Ibid., 3. 253 The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2014). 254 "The Sister Chapel: An Essential Feminist Collaboration." 255 Ilise Greenstein quoted in The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration, 10. 256 Writer Gloria Feman Orenstein quoted in Priscilla Frank, "God Is a Woman in Previously Forgotten Feminist Exhibit ‘the Sister Chapel’: The 1970s Art Project Is Finally Being Revived," The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/god-is-a-woman-in-previously- forgotten-feminist-exhibit-the-sister-chapel_us_56fc0136e4b083f5c6065196. 257 Hélène Bowen Raddeker, "Feminism and Spirituality in Fantastic Fiction: Contemporary Women Writers in Australia," Women's Studies International Forum 44 (2014). 258 Paul Reid-Bowen, "Great Goddess, Elemental Nature or Chora? Philosophical Contentions and Constructs in Contemporary Goddess Feminism," Feminist Theology 16, no. 1 (2007): 104. 259 Max Dashu, "In the Artists’ Corner with Max Dashú," Goddess Thealogy 1, no. 1 (December) (2011). 260 Melissa Raphael, "Goddess Religion, Postmodern Jewish Feminism, and the Complexity of Alternative Religious Identities," Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 1, no. 2 (April) (1998): 212. 261 Noreen Shanahan, "When Women Rule," Herizons 22, no. 4 (Spring 2009): 14. 262 Edith L. Crowe and Arlene A. Noble, "Art and Documentation Integrated: Judy Chicago's Birth Project," Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 3, no. 3 (1984). 263 Ricia Anne Chansky, "When Words Are Not Enough: Narrating Power and Femininity through the Visual Language of Judy Chicago's the Dinner Party," Auto/Biography Studies 29, no. 1 (2014). 264 Judy Chicago, Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist (New York: Penguin, 1996), 93.

149 265 Amelia Jones, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 95–96. 266 Viki D. Thompson Wylder, "Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" and "Birth Project" as Religious Symbol and Visual Theology" (The Florida State University, 1993). 267 Chicago, Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist, 38–39. 268 Benjamin Sutton, "Artist Enacts Origin of the World at Musée D’orsay—and, Yes, That Means What You Think," Artnet News, https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/artist-enacts-origin-of-the- world-at-musee-dorsay-and-yes-that-means-what-you-think-35011. 269 Stephen Heyman, "Deborah De Robertis: Shocking for a Purpose," The New York Times, 29 September 2016. 270 Carol P. Christ, "Whose History Are We Writing? Reading Feminist Texts with a Hermeneutic of Suspicion," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20, no. 2 (2004): 69. 271 Lee, "Goddess Religion and Women's Spirituality: A Christian Feminist Response," 21. 272 Suzanne Hudson, "Mickalene Thomas," Artforum International 51, no. 3 (2012): 282. 273 Lisa Melandri, "Points of Origin: An Interview with Mickalene Thomas," in Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe (Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2012). 274 Rachel Wolff, "The Bold Paintings of Mickalene Thomas," Architectural Digest, http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/artist-mickalene-thomas-paintings-brooklyn-newyork. 275 I use the term pornography here in contrast to acts of self-sexualisation by women, which can be empowering as discussed in Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005); Janet Nowatzki and Marian M Morry, "Women’s Intentions Regarding, and Acceptance of, Self-Sexualizing Behaviour," Psychology of Women Quarterly 33 (2009); Mia Pellizzer, Marika Tiggemann, and Levina Clark, "Enjoyment of Sexualisation and Positive Body Image in Recreational Pole Dancers and University Students," Sex Roles 74 (2016); Kim Marie Vaz, "A Woman in the Grip of the Archetype of the Sexual Priestess," The Arts in Psychotherapy 28 (2001). 276 Mulvey, "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema." 277 Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, "Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women’s Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks " Psychology of Women Quarterly 21 (1997); Luc Pauwels, "Visual Sociology Reframed: An Analytical Synthesis and Discussion of Visual Methods in Social and Cultural Research," Sociological Methods & Research 38, no. 4 (2010). 278 Caputi, "The Naked Goddess: Pornography and the Sacred," 181. 279 Louise Tondeur, "A History of Pubic Hair, or Reviewers’ Responses to Terry Eagleton’s after Theory," in Last Taboo : Women and Body Hair, ed. Karin Lesnik-Oberstein (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007), 53. 280 Ibid. 281 Ibid. 282 Marilou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993), 252. 283 Bronwyn Watson, "Petrina Hicks Updates Botticelli with Award-Winning Venus," The Australian, 3 January 2015. 284 Amelia Jones, "Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro; Female Imagery," in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (London, UK: Routledge, 2010), 40. 285 Susan Griffin cited in Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, 3. 286 Spencer-Rodgers et al., "The Power of Affirming Group Values: Group Affirmation Buffers the Self-Esteem of Women Exposed to Blatant Sexism." 287 Gervais, Hillard, and Vescio, "Confronting Sexism: The Role of Relationship Orientation and Gender." 288 Harris, Dance of the Spirit: The Seven Steps of Women's Spirituality. 289 Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, 83. 290 Jan Brace-Govan, "Representations of Women's Active Embodiment and Men's Ritualized Visibility in Sport," Marketing Theory 10, no. 4 (2010).

150 Chapter 5: In Her Hands–Negotiating Artistic Production as Activist Intervention

My own work as a thinker has no mother tongue, only a succession of translations, of displacements, of adaptations to changing conditions. In other words, the nomadism I defend as a theoretical option is also an existential condition that for me translates into a style of thinking. —Rosi Braidotti291

The creative works produced for my doctoral project respond to the themes of engagement, presence and embodiment within gendered terrains that are at the core of my practice. The installations are thus transformed into a gendered sacred terrain, a memorial, a legacy to the eco thealogians of the past and today, a visual index of indicators of gestures of devotion, a visual diary, aesthetic documentation, and a celebration of my own experiences of the sacred.

The creative research processes I have undertaken have culminated in several core motifs that inform my final exhibition: the hand, the female body, and patterns of nomadic pilgrimage. The concepts behind this trinity, as well as personal experiences that led to these three motifs, will be discussed in detail throughout this chapter.

Out of the Woods (Thurs 20 March – Sat 29 March 2014)

Upon receiving a Griffith University Postgraduate Research Scholarship, I began to experiment and reflect on how to make a substantial body of work that best expressed the relationship between landscape, deity, and the feminine. After experimenting with collage as a new process in the first semester, I went on to produce my first postgraduate exhibition Out of the Woods (2014, figure 55).

151 Figure 55 Emma Rochester, Out of the Woods 2014, satin, lace, chiffon, silk crepe de chine, wood metal tubing and vintage wedding accessories, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

152 Out of the Woods considers the layers of both cultural and biological differences that are veiled in and through the female body. This work explored a metaphorical leaving of home as a site of both cultural and biological ideas, which modify the body. Using the multiple layers of discarded wedding dresses, from trains to bodices, I cut the discarded gowns into stereotypical women's body parts, mainly bottoms and breasts. These forms were then spontaneously sewn together. I also incorporated patterned fabric I had created from impressions of walking around the lake near my home.

To me, the custom-designed fabric of the lake was a representation of nature or biology, while the white, cream, and ivory of the wedding gowns symbolised culture. Inherent in the gowns was the possibility of touching the residual memories of the women who had worn them. By overlaying the custom-designed fabric with textiles taken from wedding dresses, I was able to conceal and layer ‘nature’ (represented by the lake fabric) within the culturally constructed body shapes cut out of the wedding gowns. This allows the potential for the unknown actualities that had occurred in each dress to inform or affect the constructions of shapes. Interplaying synthetic and natural fibres, with custom designed and hegemonic customary traditional white gowns was a form of political agency, which expresses the powerful inherent potential in and of fabric.

In this exhibition, amorphous forms as multitudinous blobs filled the gallery space, showcasing the way I experience nature as being both within, of, and around the body, contrasting with the restrictive conventions of a culture that tries to confine and re-construct the biological identity of women (figure 56).

Out of the Woods was an opportunity to reflect on my positioning in the world before I stepped out of the domestic and into new uncharted terrains of dwelling perpetually between alternative gendered sites of reverence. In this way, I was creating an understanding of self in order to perform the sacred, and to reinterpret an aesthetic language of alternative gendered sacrality in motion.

153 Figure 56 Emma Rochester, Out of the Woods 2014, satin, lace, chiffon, silk crepe de chine, wood, metal tubing and vintage wedding accessories, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 57 Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures with amethyst, pearls, beads, rhinestones, wood and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

154 Earth is the first embodied step in the serpentine path that I moved upon for the next three-years.

Travelling with Carol P. Christ during spring 2014, I visited numerous interconnecting sacred women’s sites on a tour called the “Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete”. Christ, as a feminist author, has been influential in the launch and sustainment of the Goddess Movement, and guides women on sacred tours through Crete twice to three times a year.

On a fifteen-day odyssey, Christ ushered myself and eighteen other women through Minoan and Neolithic sites of reverence, all of which depicted a Mother Goddess and women in roles of sacred service, devotion, power and worship. In each site, I had a different physical and psychical reaction. Dorothy A. Lee argues that the understanding of woman divine as experienced in Goddess-centred sites is capable of opening women's lives to the divine in an embodied way.292

On the tour, it became immediately apparent that I was irritated by the clicking noise of my camera, and that while I could glean ideas about how I reacted to seeing the God-as-She, the rhizomatic network of international women of various genders whom I witnessed expressing openness, devotion, grief, freedom, joy and vibrancy were caught in private moments in a public sacred place, not to be recorded either by sound or image without permission.

I also felt that by asking each woman for permission to document her visual language of the sacred, I may be creating a barrier between a raw and unmediated experience for myself and for the other, so I chose to be a participatory witness instead. I put aside any desire to document others in what might be for them a unique opportunity to experience the God-as-Woman in an ancient site. I also felt that documenting others would change the focus and nature of my PhD research from an experiential process to an empirical project. I made the decision to record my experiences at the sacred sites reflexively,

155 through drawing and fabric construction, rather than use the more immediate, but potentially intrusive mediums of photography or video.

This sensitivity of place and ethics also allowed me to concentrate more effectively on my personal impressions, to highlight my own experience, bodily sensations, memories and the witnessing of the way I opened to energies present at the site. I reflected on and noted the way that my body dissolved into the rocks, stones, cave walls, and brightly embroidered cloth. Crete became a sensorium of the sacred, the touch and feel of rocks and sculptures worn down by women’s hands seeking out these special places where God-as-Woman was present. To petition Her, to pray to Her, to give thanks to Her, to invite Her in, to grieve and express rage to Her. All these accumulated sacred spaces, shared with the touch of other female hands, entered into the recesses of my skin and my mind.

Inside the openings of the Earth in Crete, it was as if my body became Her because I was born from Her and would return to Her:293 the Earth was as Mother or Gaia. As Christ articulates,

Feminists … more commonly begin with attitudes toward the female body and move from there to the human body, the earth body, and the world body (or the universe as a whole). Though starting from different points, process and feminist thinkers arrive at many of the same conclusions about the changing world and the body.294

In many moments on this tour and on subsequent pilgrimages, my body seemed to dissolve into the Earth’s body. It was as if my flesh became transparent and the body became the data generator of the brain as I communed with new and old images of woman and Earth.

Hence, the möbius strip, with its revealing of the interior on the exterior, became influential to the development of artefacts for this third exhibition as I sought to demonstrate the way in which my interior feelings were connecting to the

156 external environment of the container of my skin. Many other women I encountered also expressed this feeling on pilgrimage.

From Crete, I arrived in America to undertake what was to become a three- month artist-in-residency at the Crane Arts, Philadelphia, USA. As a result of spending time in sites that affirmed aspects of my body shape, organs, skin as vessel and flesh as a perforate knowledge base, I was becoming more aware of a sense of the sacredness of the body that had occurred as a result of spending time in sites that no longer dehumanized my body, but rather affirmed the physical aspects of my being. I had seen my own form mirrored in the sites I had visited with Carol P. Christ.

To generate this feeling of the inside on the outside, or an overwhelming sense of the body entering into oneness, for the Touching the Earth exhibition, I used custom-designed upholstery weight cotton to create soft sculptures of eight amorphous womanly forms dancing towards the earth (figure 58). Each one hung from the ceiling in a processional line of figurative objects designed to represent different states of embodied devotion at gendered sites of reverence in Crete

Carrying an "auto-biographical tone", the textile forms were reminiscent of the postures I had witnessed in women as they approached sites that are sacred to them.295 More than this, the fabric depicted multilayered images/photographs that I had taken during the pilgrimage. Christ had taken me to several sacred sites that housed Kronos stones, which are considered by many to be altars that women used at Minoan spiritual centres.296 After photographing these stones, I imported them into Photoshop to create a collage, which became the digital pattern for the fabric used to construct the gender-specific forms.

On this custom-designed fabric, I drew spontaneous forms symbolic of the female body: legs, then arms, and then the remainder of the body. Whilst the patterns I created had anatomical features, they also took on a feel of primitive

157 Figure 58 Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures with amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 59 Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, textile sculptures with amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

158 figuration and greater symbolic meaning. They were intended to have a primitive other worldly feel that linked them back to the Neolithic Goddesses and, Greco– Roman Venus sculptures I had seen and then interpreted for the present time, inclusive of women's bodies today. They transgressed time to also incorporate an almost futuristic impression of spiritual journeys to come (figure 59).

Since my research explores women's spiritual journeys, I also felt it was important to work with tools that are often related to women's art and crafts. I stuffed the fabric forms with quilt batting whilst taking inspiration from Louise Bourgeois’, Fragile Goddess (2002, figure 60) and Annette Messager’s Penetration (1993–94, figures 61 and 62). Messager’s use of space in the installation Penetration was of great interest to me. The installation was designed so that the viewer enters into and is surrounded by it, thereby inserting the viewer into the artwork. This allows the observer to view the artwork from within its interior, in the same way as one enters into a deep crevice or cave.

Complementing Messager’s consideration of space is her use of craft materials to create rough anatomical forms stuffed with cotton that hang from the ceiling. She draws our attention to the biology of the body. Each form is casually stitched, creating a commentary on the feminine art practices of embroidery and needlework. Messager uses sewing as a way to reflect on needlework as a challenge to the present, and past exclusion of women’s handicrafts from fine art.297

However, I wanted the viewer to be situated within the interiority of the artefacts, but I also used the concept of the möbius strip to make a statement about the outward and inward landscape of women’s bodies. After the invention of the X-ray, the Modernist artists no longer believed in the “opacity of bodies”.298 In their work, skin no longer appeared as a shell that protected the inner cavities and recesses of the flesh. Instead, the human form became

159 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 60 Louise Bourgeois, Fragile Goddess 2002, cloth, 31.7 x 12.7 x 15.2cm.

160 Figure 61 Annette Messager, Penetration 1993-1994, cotton, polyester, angora wool, nylon, electric lights, dimensions variable.

Figure 62 Annette Messager, Penetration 1993–1994, cotton, polyester, angora wool, nylon, electric lights, dimensions variable.

161 diaphanous, suggesting other, more abstract, concepts such as the ultra–fine membrane between the sacred and profane, including altered states of consciousness that allow for a merging of the body with Gaia’s body: This creates a sense of oneness or an oceanic feeling; the sense of separation as an individual, and yet a feeling of being immersed in it all, made from it all.

In Touching the Earth, I hoped to interlock the female forms made from a durable non-transparent tissue (upholstery weight cotton) and stuffed taut, with nebulous vagina- and womb–like forms of women’s interiority sewn visibly onto their exterior. By revealing abstract internal organs on the external body, I hoped to both highlight the structural form of women’s rounded bodies and contrast this with the hidden identifiers of sexuate difference within. The audience was invited into new ways of seeing women’s bodies with the inside on the outside as each form articulated a posture of the sacred, and as sacred beings themselves.

In this way, the bodies represented in this show are sexuate. Each body’s fate in terms of gender, sexual identity, race, economics, and privilege is unknown but the body is biological, and reveals an array of personal sensory information, creating a privatised experience of the world. Christ elucidates this embedded connectivity:

Embodied theology is rooted in personal experiences in our individual bodies. At the same time, we all live in a relational world, shaped by social and historical events and forces that are shared. The relationship between theologies and experiences is embedded in complex webs, with the precise factors that lead to the differences in view being impossible to untangle from the whole.299

Touching the Earth becomes sexuate self-identification, self-celebration, and an acknowledgement of communal others.

162 Leaning into the Earth (Thursday September 11th to Saturday September 27th 2014)

The act of shifting between patriarchal constructed urban space and matrilineal intergenerational environs is in line with the current revisioning of contemporary feminist theory. Drawing on craft activism and physical activism, I move between these spaces in a highly considered way. For example, throughout this PhD project, I aimed to use my body as a tool to offer up alternative visions for a feminist future. This can be clearly seen in the collaborative project I undertook with textile artist and designer Janell Wysock, Leaning into the Earth, in 2014 (figures 63 and 64), where we decided to weave together in front of spiritually signiﬁcant female statues for the divine feminine within the heart of Philadelphia, USA.

Archaeologist Eva Keuls states that learning to spin and weave in ancient Greece was “a major element in the enculturation of the female...second in importance only to that of marriage.”300 After I met textile artist and designer Janell Wysock by chance, she agreed to teach me how to weave in her studio in Philadelphia. Sitting side by side (in the traditional manner of learning to weave), I could make mental notes and watch as her ﬁngers moved between the weft and the warp (figure 64). This position was upheld as we decided to weave together in front of spiritually signiﬁcant statues for women within the heart of Philadelphia.

At ﬁrst, Wysock and I wondered if locating female sculptures and then weaving in front of them for durations of over ﬁve hours was setting ourselves an arduous and physically impossible task. We were excited to locate female statues within the city centre, thinking that there would at least be twenty to thirty statues. However, aside from a statue of the Virgin Mary, we could only locate two named, stand-alone statues in the Philadelphia metropolitan area: Our Lady of the Visitations of Knock and Joan of Arc. In contrast, there were hundreds of male sculptures of the American forefathers, pilgrims, men of office, male labourers and Greek gods. Why were depictions of real life women from history

163 Figure 63 Janell Wysock & Emma Rochester, Leaning into the Earth 2014, textile sculptures, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Janell Wysock.

Figure 64 Janell Wysock & Emma Rochester, Leaning into the Earth 2014, documentation of performance. Photo courtesy Diane Roka and Janell Wysock.

164 who could have been role models for American and international visitors missing from the city streets? The fact that there were only two representations of stand-alone historical women who also happen to be associated with the sacred—Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary—is telling. The landscape in which these statues are situated thus became the focus of a pilgrimage within the boundaries of an urban space and hence the creation of the sacred within the urban.

Preparing for weavings in a public location, we cut strips of the custom-designed fabric for Touching the Earth (a previous exhibition discussed above), and decided to work with the pink colour theme, as it was reminiscent of the internal colour of everywoman, the umbilical cord and hyper-stereotypical associations with the divine feminine. We leaned the weaving frame near female ancestors who have taken on psycho-spiritual importance. In this way, the work was not about resisting, but leaning into, in the same way as the weaving frame leant against the gate, the grill, or the platform that protected these important female spiritual and cultural figures. This can be clearly seen in the weaving undertaken in front of Joan of Arc at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The durational nature of Leaning into the Earth makes use of performance- making-as-inquiry. Such a process allows for a revisiting of the distinctiveness of women’s perspectives within socially constructed discourses. For example, the way in which the suffragettes and other intergenerational women used their bodies with stamina and determination to disprove notions that they were inferior to men is a relevant theory for my research practice. This is evidenced by Agnes Beckwith who in 1876 completed a crossing of the English Channel, saying that she would swim to France to win votes for women.

This movement between specific points with a gendered focus is an activist form of pilgrimage, with its concentration on moving beyond the traditional women’s domain of the home. This represents a form of physical activism whereby the body is used vigorously to make a political statement, which is in line with

165 Figure 65 Emma Rochester, Detail of Petition Tree otherwise known as Hole, Whole, Holy 2016, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova.

Figure 66 Emma Rochester, Knotting and tying together Petition Tree also known as Hole, Whole, Holy at FACres 2016, mirror, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova.

Figure 67 Emma Rochester, Detail of Petition Tree otherwise known as Hole, Whole, Holy 2016, mirror, coins, canvas, thread, charcoal and acrylic flow paint, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy Ilene Sova. Petition Tree (Saturday May14th to Tuesday May 24th 2016) 166 1970s’ and 1980s’ feminist theory, which suggests “The personal is political” and physical activist theories that suggest “The physical is political.”301

The exhibition Petition Tree was created as part of the Open Studios at the Feminist Art Conference Residency (FACres) held at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto, in May 2016 (figures 65-67). Influencing the construction of Petition Tree was an inquiry into the domestic spaces that woman inhabit in city locales, and the contrast with historical and wild settings where revered gendered terrains are most often found. At this point in my performance journey, I had spent time in Cartago in Costa Rica; Yellowknife in the subarctic of Canada; and completed a visit to The Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff to participate in a residency at The Leighton Artist’s Colony (LAC), also in Canada. These respective experiences had impacted on my understanding of how gendered sacred sites are situated, as will be explained in detail below.

FACres was held on Toronto Island inside a heritage-listed schoolhouse where women shared rooms as part of the community ethos encouraged by the conference. Moving from the sub-Arctic, to Central America, to an island situated in one of the Great Lakes overlooking the metropolis of Toronto, provoked reflection on the way I move between a variety of specific points associated with representations of the sacred-as-gendered in both rural and urban spaces. The sites I had been to were often in remote places where fresh water is freely available as this element is essential in the labour and birth processes for women. These natural settings create a sense of the continuity of passing time. Yet at FACres, I was moving into a shared living environment just fifteen minutes from downtown Toronto where time was speeded up in the busy routines of contemporary life.

This contrast of environment prompted the realisation that there are two overarching elements at play in relation to time that impacts upon moving in and between thealogical geographies: the presence of now and perpetual presence. A current focus in future studies suggests that there is an emphasis on the presence

167 of now over perpetual presence in consideration to both space and time.302 An overarching societal trend in Western–European philosophical culture suggests that through the presence of now, each moment, regardless of location, is sacred if the practitioner believes it to be so. However, whilst this may be true for myself on one level, on another, I am interested in delving into the concept of performing perpetual presence303—that being the impact of intergenerational experience on understandings and experiences of the sacred over an extended time—and in seeing how this can be unpacked through an examination of psycho-geographical and thealogical space.304

Feminist approaches to urban geography have argued that constructed scapes such as cities, villages, and towns have traditionally been created by patriarchy for the benefit of patriarchal concepts such as industrialisation and, urbanisation, and that they demonstrate a technology and science-driven focus compounded by the development of the clock to order time.305

However, cities have also come to represent intergenerational feminine environs.306 Within the structure created by patriarchy, women have participated in space construction most prominently within domestic locations.307 In terms of thealogical geography, this translates to places of contemplation within the home such as an altar, photographs on a mantle, a sun room, a meditation room, or alternatively, a garden that is used either independently, or as a place for women to meet and exchange understandings of the God-as-She.

The Feminist Art Conference (FAC) founded by Ilene Sova is political. Sova cultivates the FACres and accompanying conference Embodied Resistance as positive transgressions. (The conference took place in January 2017 and exhibited one of the video artefacts created as part of this PhD.) Participation in the FACres is designed to be experienced as a liberation; a move away from normative academic approaches to empowering persons who identify with feminism, and the feminine.

168 Creating in a community environ, with shared domestic spaces, fosters empowering situations in which women can come to understand their self, art practice, and how they can create in a community feminist setting. The sophisticated theorising and enactment of feminist art principles in practice present at FACres meant that I experienced a radical shift from the patriarchal constructed urban space I had travelled through and the matrilineal intergenerational pilgrimage sites I had been experiencing.

Due to the gender implications implicit within the use of fibre, I felt it was important during this close to non-patriarchal period, to work with tools often related to women's art and crafts. For this reason, I decided the work I would create at FACres would maintain a strong textile focus, marking an intentional commitment to create a new relationship with the medium of fabric within a feminist community.

Drawing on past experiences, I brought with me visual texts created at Leighton Artists’ Colony (LAC) at The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada (figure 68). At LAC, I stacked several large-scale linen canvases one on top of the other and then poured pink and red acrylic-flow paint across the top canvas. I left the porous canvas stack to sit for over a week, so as to allow enough time for the paint to seep all the way down to the bottom canvas, mirroring the way water filters through different sedimentary layers of the earth. As the paint seeped, I could imagine the sensation of the pilgrimage experiences I enacted returning and pouring into me. It was as if as the paint flowed, so too did my body become regenerated through the process of fluidity.

Once the paint had dried, I separated the canvases and used charcoal to inscribe self-created texts referencing multiple voices onto the linen. Twining creative writing with theoretical underpinning was a process of transcribing my experience through text onto the flesh of the fibrous canvas.

169 Figure 68 Emma Rochester, Canvases for Petition Tree as a Work in Process 2016, Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, Leighton Artists Colony at The Banff Centre for the Arts.

170 At FACres I used these ‘text-iles’ as a starting point, cutting them up into shapes resembling pubic triangles over the first few days of the conference. Once each canvas was cut into geometrical anatomical shapes, I placed all the triangles together, and then placed my attention on them as if they were tarot cards. Using tarot as a guide, I cut, washed, and riffled all of the symbolic pubic triangles, then each triangle was intuitively selected and patch worked into the growing form. This process of intuitive selection guided by an ancient practice of tarot created a modern rhizomatic network of interconnections. The text became fragmented and, in doing so, I realised that the form that was coming into being was like a tree, one where words evoking memories floated in and around the viewer like leaves.

As I stitched the triangles together, red thread began to hang loose like roots and the tendrils of vines (figure 65). I remembered that I had pennies left over from my performance Each Time the Circle Turns, It Is Not the Same at The Banff Centre artist residency (BAIR) in December 2015 (figures 87–90). Each penny had a hole drilled into it, and I realised that not only was the penny representative of moments when pilgrims throw pennies into a stream, well, or pond at pilgrimage sites, but that the texture of the penny had a shiny quality to it, that reflected the light and created a glistening effect emulating water. For this reason, I began to tie the pennies onto the petition tree, providing my financial offering alongside my prayers (figure 66).

Underneath the Petition Tree, I placed a mirror on the floor so that the viewer had to move underneath the shade of the arbour (figure 67). By looking down so as to see up, the viewer participated in a dimensional experience of above reflected below. This mirror effect created a sense of multiplication, replication, and a questioning of reality and dimensions.

In this way, I created a sacred space within the confines of the domestic environ that referenced the organic realm without, blending symbols of two places, the rural and the urban, into one as a form of communal offering. This amalgamation

171 of places matches the blurring that perpetual pilgrimage affords. Petition Tree is representative of points of arrival as women attach offerings to mark their presence at the site, and give thanks before entering a sacred location. With its arbour canopy, Petition Tree also suggests nomad tents and home-like structures. The tree becomes a nest of the sacred.

Sacred Hands: The Presence of Touch

Shortly after completing the residency at Crane Arts, Philadelphia, I was invited to learn from Vasilis Markakis and Christine Hollinetz, official conservators for the Archaeological Museum of Athens. After my time spent in America, I had begun to see my work as leaning towards indexical forms in its expression. It appeared to me that my experiences were shaped by the world I was embodied within. The sacred sites and places of power I visited had depth, tactility, and were palpably dimensional.

I observed that the physical aspects of many of the ancient sites I visited had been shaped by the touch of natural elements and human presence. Earth and marble had been smoothed by the caress of hands and/or wind and water over a long period of time. The organic and architectural structure of sites had been transformed via the impact of pilgrims, tourists, and the curious alike. Similarly, I had been to sacred sites where I drank from streams and took up pure spring water in the hollows of my hands. My hands had been caressed and puckered from my interaction with the sacred location. During this act of drinking, it occurred to me that my embodied experience of nomadic perambulations within feminine sacralised sites occurred simultaneously within two forms. The first was that of the Earth held within the forces of the universe and the second was that of the generative and creative life force that similarly exists within the container of my body. This new awareness of Earth and the female body as symbiotic vessels and vehicles was complemented by my readings of ecofeminists’ and ecothealogians’ viewpoints of God-as-Mother, and Earth-as- Gaia/Mother. My conceptual research aligned with my affective response, which

172 was reinforced after several visits to the Heraklion Archaeology Museum in Crete.

Filling museum display cases were impressions of clay forms depicting women’s shapes. Sculptural and religious votive offerings highlighted the forms of the body with symbolic representations of the hand, foot, and eye, among others. I also noted the intricacy of the metallic work of Minoan jewellery, which highlighted symbolic relationships between flora and woman’s decorative adornment. The use of bronze and copper in double-sided axes with their various evocative and sensual interpretations intermingled, both as symbolic memories and as indicators for the way in which mediums expressive of reverence in the past could be drawn upon within a contemporary art practice. My receptive engagement with the artefacts generated possible new directions for my art production.

A new idea began to seed: to transform my work into cast artefacts. More specifically, I sought to translate fabric sculptures I had been experimenting with into bronze, to materialise the ephemeral workings of the hand into permanent non-degradable materials that could withstand the test of time. Markakis and Hollinetz offered to apprentice me through this process.

Initially, I began to experiment with wrapping and binding fabric into floral forms. Binding and wrapping has often been associated with women’s traditions and ritual actions; for example, the tying and knotting of ribbons onto trees to petition for and/or to give appreciation for requests being fulfilled. I myself had done this at the Paliani Convent in Crete, where I tied a thin red ribbon to the Sacred Myrtle Tree (figure 69). Participating in ritual practice reminded me of another ceremonial process of anointing and preparing the dead using textiles, enveloping the body in decorative cloth for rites of passage (such as the

173 Figure 69 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting tying offering ribbons onto the sacred myrtle tree at the Paliani Convent in Crete, Greece as part of a Ariadne Institute Goddess Pilgrimage with Carol P Christ 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist.

174 voluminous wedding dress), and the binding and braiding of the hair, among many other significant ways in which fibre and ritual practice merge.

I began to notice the aspect of touch associated with gestures of devotion that I was witnessing at the sites I visited: the way the women around me held a candle, placed flowers in a vase, got down on their knees, kissed the earth, wiped tears from the eyes, danced through the space, and held an offering in a personally meaningful way before placing it carefully into a hidden place. The practice of grasping and searching, giving and receiving, touching and acknowledging as ritualised choreography within sacred sites of woman divine intrigued me. I realised that the hand, with its ability to hold and release, shape and manipulate, was an essential part of this embodied extended performance.

Carol P. Christ identifies a discord between scholars who discuss the ritual of votive offering and what may actually be occurring in sites of ritual in Crete. Christ notes that many scholars suggest that offerings are given as a way of security, a personal and social practice undertaken to ensure a practitioner’s petition will be answered and fulfilled.308 This implies that the giving of votive offerings is underscored by a motivation to receive something in return. However, Christ suggests that the act of offering can also be perceived as a way of giving thanks, a form of gratitude for what one has already received:

The person who gives “because she knows that she has already been given” can give with a spirit of spontaneous generosity that expresses confidence in the relational matrix of life. She can give not in order to ensure that she will be given something in the future, but rather because she knows that giving and receiving are at the heart of interdependent life.309

Between my time working with the fabric, binding, twisting and experimenting with various types of wood glue and resin to see how to create a substantial enough floral form to caste, I visited sacred women’s sites close to or within proximity of Athens. As I moved through the sites, my awareness heightened in

175 regards to votive offerings, with the most prolific amount being at Brauron (which has since flooded and is currently closed).

Many of the votive offerings were of small hands holding animals, offerings that point directly to the myth, history and the initiatory ceremonial ritual that were once practiced there. Archaeologists confirm that young girls between seven and eleven years of age from Attic (modern-day Athens) completed an initiation ritual which ensured them entrance to a womanhood graced by Artemis’s blessing. To begin this ritual, a young girl would make a twenty five kilometre pilgrimage. Upon arrival at the site, she would offer herself into the care of the priestesses of Artemis. Priestesses and young girls alike then reenacted the myth of Artemis’s substitution of a bear for Iphigeneia’s body. The myth recounts Iphigeneia’s selection to die as a blood sacrifice, an act of agency where Iphigeneia’s bodily contribution is given on behalf of others to ensure appeasement and request favour and blessings from Artemis.310 However, at the last moment, Artemis crept in and substituted a bear for Iphigeneia’s body so that she did not die. The myth changed in form and meaning throughout ancient Greece, dependent on locale, so that Iphigeneia takes the form of a deer or bull in some stories.311

The myth and respective rituals enacted at Brauron relate to a substitution of the flesh. The girls replicate the goddess’s generative powers, participating in the process of fusion and synthesis. Young girls who bring their votive offerings to the cult sanctuary are identified with their inanimate offerings. The young girl became a ‘she-bear’ through ritual and ceremonial practice; she took on various forms and then returned to herself as one who is forever dedicated to Artemis.312 Artist Sandra M. Stanton expresses the link between becoming and touch in her painting Artemis (2006, figure 70), where a modern incarnation of a priestess of Artemis touches the throat of a bear in the foreground. Stanton actively studies myths of Goddess feminism and is interested in creating contemporary explorations that invite a strengthening of the innate connection between women and nature.313 The painting represents the event of transformation

176 between bear and woman, reminiscent of the “female-bonding and solidarity” that many theorists argue was principal to the transformational rites at Brauron.314

The shifting nature of this dedication ritual is reminiscent of the mutable and multifarious experience of women’s bodies today. As I stood in this place where temple columns still stand and flowers grow between the crevices of stone, I became aware of the connection between the body and the sacred. The concept of holding, touching, being, and becoming one within and of the sacred seemed palpable through felt bodily experience. Therefore, I decided to represent this experience with a votive object depicting the anatomical parts of the body.

While I was in Athens, I took longer pilgrimages to sacralised locations further afield, including the Delphi site of the Pythia/Pytherus (the Oracle of Delphi) and a Black Madonna icon at the Monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa (Grace of Panagia, Virgin Mary) in Amorgos (figure 71), the second-oldest monastery in Greece. The Grace of Panagia is taken out from the Monastery once a year by the Greek Orthodox priests so that she can see the sea. Joining a group of pilgrims from the island of Paros, who allowed me to join their mini-bus tour, I arrived before dawn to start climbing the steep steps of the monastery with the rising sun. Later, I would see the Cycladic Goddess statues found on the island of Amorgos at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom. I was afforded time to spend at this Museum as I participated in the “Pilgrimage to the Heart of the Sacred” conference, presenting a series of slides under the title of “Pilgrimages to Gendered Landscapes Through the Eyes of the Artist” at Mansfield College, Oxford, UK.

The site that most moved me during my time in Athens was the Neolithic fertility site over which one small corner the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Marina had been built. One late afternoon, following my instruction in the studio, I decided to take a long walk around the Parthenon, trying to feel and sense my way around the vast archaeological site, rather than follow indicators set out on maps or be

177 Figure 70 Sandra M. Stanton, Artemis/Diana 2006, oil on linen, 71.2 x 60.96cm. Image courtesy the artist. © Sandra M. Stanton.

178 Figure 71 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting pilgrimage to the Black Madonna Icon at the Monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa (Grace of Panagia -Virgin Mary) in Amorgos 2014-2016, digital print, 128 x 182cm. Image courtesy the artist.

179 aimlessly drawn along by the sound of tourist guides on microphones. I began to go into a silent space in which my body could become a channel, one where memory and imagination began to crisscross. I found myself walking as if I knew where I was going, and came to a fence.

There seemed no reason for the barrier to be there; on the other side were rock platforms, a few scattered beer cans, and glass bottles. I circumnavigated the fence, walking my way around it until I came to a sign, which read:

Ancient fertility site. Women had once placed their bottoms inside the various holes incised here in order for the Goddess to impregnate them.

This site reflects a belief held in Neolithic times of the possibility for conception without a man. The women who came to this site were attempting to experience a virgin birth, participating in an immaculate act that pre-dates the Virgin Mary’s own parthenogenesis. Marguerite Rigoglioso has done extensive research into miraculous births in classical antiquity, noting that the practice continued from prehistory through classical times and is still successfully practiced today. Rigoglioso argues that the ‘virgin mother’ archetype is an aspect of goddess found in many matriarchal cultures worldwide. In relation to the Greek Pantheon, she states:

Gaia, Hera, Athena, Artemis, and others were understood to be great goddesses who created the entire cosmos out of themselves without any help from males. They were sovereign and inviolable.315

This self-generative, self-replicating ability to give birth without the need of another was prevalent in ancient Greece316 to the point where certain specialised virgin priestesshoods existed in which women attempted to conceive children in various ways as an elevated form of spiritual practice with a specific purpose.317

Mary F. Foskett, who is specifically interested in the virginity of the Virgin Mary, notes how even after she had given birth to Jesus and was married to Joseph, “her virginity yields to nothing and no one”.318 This popular attitude to Mary 180 across many cultures shows how the concept of miraculous birth has survived for centuries due to its relationship with the original definition of virgin as one who is inviolable. Other definitions from ancient times of what it means to be a virgin are ‘young woman’, ‘unmarried woman’, and ‘a woman who is neither owned nor possessed by anyone’.

My hands were the first and only part of my body that could reach through the fence in an attempt to touch the sacralised rocks at this dormant site of enacting miraculous birth. In this way, the hands became the primary recipient of ritualised and sacralised experience, touching, grasping, reaching, and seeking, including the contact of touching the earth with worn, but durable, skin. At that moment, the In Her Hands exhibition was conceived. I longed to touch these rocks with the potential of their fertility, not for the birth of a child but for seeding, encouraging, amplifying and strengthening qualities such as creativity, prosperity, and the capacity of rejuvenation.319

At this point, my hand became a symbol of inquiry, a tool of identification through touch, a mode of giving and receiving. It became, as Christ discussed in her theories of gift giving in ancient Greece, a bodily action of co-operation, temperance, harmonizing, and integration.320 I was giver, receiver, and weaver.

Louise Bourgeois’s Welcoming Hands, embodied in bronze, was first created in 1996, with a select number permanently installed at The Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France in 2000, while others are currently on tour (figures 72 and 73). Each hand becomes exemplary of an emotive act whether it be tenderness, longing, comfort, anxiety, reassurance, or desire. The complexity of giving and receiving as addressed by Carol P. Christ above is evident here.321

After my experience at the fence, I returned to the studio and discussed my new awareness of the role of the hand in sacralising a site as well as experiencing its fullness in depth with Markakis and Hollinetz. As both had worked on various temples for Aphrodite across the islands and mainland Greece, they were able to

181 show me specific examples where the hands of Aphrodite have fallen off the statue or been intentionally cut off by warring tribes as way of signalling to various ancient Greek peoples that the presence of their patron would no longer be able to support and protect them, for they had literally cut off the supply of giving.

I looked up paintings and sculptures of Aphrodite, and found similar hand positions that were repeated over time in statues, as well as in paintings from the Romantic period of art history. As I had visited Aphrodite temples and caves in Crete and Cyprus and would soon be going to Lesvos, I felt that it was appropriate to replicate the hand positions of some of the Aphrodite statues, participating in a form of classical rhetoric.

However, as I attempted and performed adaptions, translations, and imitations of similar hand positions, I realised that these were also self-referential and that by using my hand, I was involved in a nuance of artistic-identity. I could consider the scale and essence of my own hand in contrast to a representation of God-as- She through the physicality of Aphrodite’s hand. Each hand position that was cast into mould, plaster, and/or resin became a physical documentation of my hand as an indicator of identity in that specific moment, and so the humour and delight of replication at play softened into recreating felt experiences of the sacred and trying to imbue and emulate this sense of Aphrodite in and through the hands.

In this way, the act of making the votive offerings went beyond the self- referential to being a physical example of transmission. The impromptu process that took place in Markakis and Hollinetz’s studio was done in the hope that the viewer could experience my felt state as my hand was cast in the positions that were aligned with postures of Aphrodite, recollecting these statues and respective landscapes not as only a memory but also as emulation.

182 In order to comply with copyright these images has been removed.

Figures 72 and 73 Louise Bourgeois, Welcoming Hands 1996, bronze, varying dimensions up to 50.8 x 76. 2cm.

183 To make the cast, I had to hold my hand steady as the alginate was poured around it. Alginate is a viscous gum, which can set around objects in order to make close to perfect reproductions. I focused on a specific intention in my mind and reenacted a particular feeling state associated with memories of reverence and sacrality. In this way, the process of making became an action of offering, creating votive offerings with the prayer of my being within in it. As I embodied feeling states, ideas were generated about how to imitate the positions but also to add contemporary symbols, such as the geometric crystals that can be seen in one of the bronzes. The process became an interrelation; a weaving of the past into the present in solidified form (figures 74 and 75).

In Her Hands (Thursday, 16 February – Sunday, 5 March 2017)

For my final exhibition my intention is that viewers feel as if they are inserted into an assemblage of forms that beckon, swirl, and/or move. Many different mediums are combined to create a synthesis between forms: an oracular combination of bronze, textile, video, and synthetic sculpture. The viewer is invited to perambulate through the gallery, moving between groups of cast hands and among soft, amorphous abstractions of women in states of devotion. The cast hands were an important element of the exhibition, placed on the floor as well as hung from the far wall of the gallery, each one expressing the materiality of a mudra, invoking the qualities of sense and touch. They represent a sensorial experience gleaned from each site experienced and reflected upon in and through the body. As noted previously, while at the Neolithic fertility site inside the grounds of Saint Marina, I realised that hands may be the first place of grasping, reaching, and seeking, besides the suckling of a child’s lips while breastfeeding. The hands presented here are also votive offerings, sacralising the gallery space by transforming it from a neutral space to one of appreciation for the skills and forms of art making that I had acquired on my nomadic perambulations of the sacred.

184 Figure 74 Emma Rochester, Cast of the artist’s hand emulating an Aphrodite Mudra whilst holding a pomegranate for In Her Hands exhibition 2014, bronze, 18.8 x10.8 x 8.5cm. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 75 Emma Rochester, Cast of the artist’s hand emulating an Aphrodite Mudra for In Her Hands exhibition 2014, bronze, 19 x 9.2 x 5.8cm. Photo courtesy the artist.

185 In the gallery space, the viewer becomes a witness to my offering, sacralising the space through their presence and conscious acknowledgement by their interaction and movement through the hands that inhabit the gallery space. Hence the viewer, through participation, acknowledges the relocation of my nomadic sacred experience into the gallery space. Between and around these hands, women’s forms move. The dynamic postures of the abstract women’s forms are synonymous with the pilgrimage gestures I witnessed first-hand at newly revised gendered sites of reverence.

Each amorphous fibre form consists of a visual collage, an assemblage of photographs that act as a visual diary, or a photographic journal that documents the specific sites I went to during my extended performance. I existed as nomad outside of normative, spiritual and religious understandings of God. Using Photoshop, I collaged photographs I had taken of sacred woman landscapes, architectures of devotion, talismans, amulets, souvenirs, and the aesthetic and decorative experience of the multitude of locales I had visited, creating over thirteen different fabric designs (figures 76-79). In this way, I have made the obscure and alternative representations of God-as-Woman I experienced into vivid designs that then become signifiers and documentation of my mystical journeys. This echoes Braidotti’s process:

[This] is my way of making myself accountable for the nomadic performances that I enact in the text. If this is a metaphor, it is one that displaces and condenses whole areas of my existence; it is a retrospective map of places I have been.322

Digitally printed onto fabric, each design was then cut up into woman’s forms using an intuitive pattern. Out of the fabric, eyes, hands, arms, vaginas, wombs and torsos were stitched together to create abstract representations of women in states associated with the pilgrimage experience. This process is similar to the one already undertaken for the previous exhibition, Touching the Earth (figure 80), except that this time, instead of digitally presenting a connection between a singular revered object of devotion (the Kronos stone), each fabric became like a

186 Figure 76 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting pilgrimages with Carol P Christ to sites such as Knossos and Phaistos on the island of Crete Greece 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist.

187 Figure 77 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting pilgrimage journey to solar temples at Santorini, Greece 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist.

188 Figure 78 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting a repeat visit to Saint Sarah associated with cults of the Black Madonna at Saintes-Maries de la Mer, Camargue, France 2015-2016, digital print, 128 x 182cm. Image courtesy the artist.

189 Figure 79 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting my departure via tour bus as part of a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Black Madonna of Montserrat, Spain 2015-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist.

190 Figure 80 Emma Rochester, Touching the Earth 2014, upholstery weight cotton, silk crepe de chine, amethyst, pearls, beads and pink wire, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

191 page from a diary or a recording from an audio journal. The different fabric is a way of glimpsing the variety of my experiences of place.

Images, icons, and motifs used in each custom-designed fabric demonstrate my engagement with the quest. Each photographic montage can thus be likened to a portrait, or a conceptual recording of the bodily and felt experiences that occurred at each sacred woman’s site I visited. Each image is part of a larger visual journey, a diary of images created and reconstructed into forms and motifs associated with God-as-Woman that I witnessed throughout the long-durational performance.

I included my own image in the fabric because pilgrimage is both individual and communal; the nomad is individuated and also part of a community (figures 76, 77, 79, 81). By piecing together images of God-as-Woman using images of my own mouth, hands, hair, toes and body, I sewed the fragments together to generate a sense of completion. In the same way that I am born anew from the culmination of vastly different embodied experiences enacted within this three- year performance odyssey. As I patch-worked each fabric into the other, the textiles become a touchstone, a way of reiterating and consecrating past experience over and over again, so that through the feel of silk on skin, memories returned and information gleaned at each site remained embodied within my touch.

The act of stitching the visual journeys into form was a remembrance, for I evoked the experience of being a witness to woman divine in thealogical terrains. Each stitch is a personalisation, a way of recording the process between experiencing the site of the God-as-She, documenting the experience through topographic photography, and an invocation of newly understood wholeness. The stimulus of experience and the method of art production itself is an aid to remembering and from there to sharing, whether it be through verbal or visual retelling.

192 Figure 81 Emma Rochester, Custom-designed fabric documenting my pilgrimage to Venus Mound at Forres, Scotland, UK 2014-2016, digital print, 147 x 210cm. Image courtesy the artist.

193 Artist and theorist Patti Shanks discusses the impact of gendered technologies in reinforcing memory, nostalgia, and the trace of the Motherline:

It depends on the gendered aspect of materials and techniques to imbue the work with a feminine presence. The stitch acts as a semiotic trace of the female experience and knowledge passed down through memory and retrieved by the artist and viewers through their own nostalgic memory.323

To evoke skin, flesh and bodily motion, I chose to fashion the custom-designed fabrics into mutable woman’s forms, each one in a different state of reaching and receiving. The sacred energy of God-as-Woman appears in her many forms, mother, death bringer, warrior, lover, and so the fibre forms are of woman simultaneously moving outwards and in the act of receivership.

Conversations with other women and personal experience have revealed that moment of realisation one feels after arriving at a sacred locale and experiencing renewal from its transformative potential, where a woman knows that she was born whole and complete, and understands that the supreme male being that is the normative understanding of God existing outside of the body is no longer valid. God is no longer elsewhere but instead is within, inhabiting our whole being.

More so, the digitally printed fabric (which acted as a photographic journal of the embodied pilgrimage performance I enacted) was also cut, stuffed and stitched into abstract dimensional vaginas, as an element of some of the amorphous female forms positioned throughout the gallery for my final exhibition. The vagina as a core motif, is used repeatedly throughout the final exhibition as a viable contemporary strategy. This usage is not designed to draw attention to the female anatomy in an essentialist reading, but rather the focus on the vagina is designed as an homage; a way of paying tribute to early second wave feminist artists whom explored gynocentric mythology.324 The use of the vagina as a core motif was part of the development of a body semantic that aimed at expressing a suite of metaphors evoking the unique ways of being woman,325 and as a 194 communal understanding of the female experience in order to create a contemporary feminist visual dialogue.326

When Judy Chicago created The Dinner Table (figure 82), Shigeko Kubota performed Vagina Paintings (figure 83) and Carolee Schneemann performed Interior Scroll (figure 84) these artefacts brought that which was hidden into the public realm, that which was considered private was revealed in gallery settings, and the vagina which was seen as an interior place of seclusion was highlighted as a site of agency. The vagina’s use in the production of performances and respective artefacts reinforced the many creative ways of becoming woman.327 For this reason the above-mentioned artists crossed thresholds of taboo yet also allowed consideration for ‘woman-as-image.’328 They initiated a discursive engagement with the concept of how mediums of art such as painting and drawing were seen to be part of the commercial male domain while the content or object of the art itself (such as the female nude figure) was more often than not feminine.329

This is exemplary in Kubota’s Vagina Paintings where the artist squats over paper with a paintbrush sewn into her underpants. The phallic paintbrush is dipped into primal red paint and the respective marks are dripped, discharged and impressed onto the paper. Kubota’s performance evokes male modes of action painting yet Kubota also activates her vagina as an artistic site of production and in doing so changes her body from object to subject to agent.330 Similarly Schneemann’s Interior Scroll explores embodied knowledge as she reads from a paper scroll that she unravels from her vagina whilst standing on a table. This practice of revealing from within speaks to how women construct embodied meaning rather than being mere passive recipients of culturally coded meaning.331

Yet Schneemann’s Interior Scroll goes further and into the psycho spiritual realm. Interior Scroll can be read as an act of remembrance, revitalisation and regeneration of the vagina and of woman’s body. Through the performative

195 Figure 82 Emma Rochester Pilgrimage to witness the ceremonial banquet that is Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Table” created 1974–79 at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor of the Brooklyn Museum 17 July 2014, digital print featuring ceramic, porcelain, textile, and an installation by Judy Chicago with a total size of 1463 × 1463cm, 12.7 x 27.84 cm. Image courtesy the artist. 196 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 83 Shigeko Kubota, Shigeko Kubota performing Vagina Painting photographic documentation of performance during Perpetual Fluxfest, Cinematheque, New York, July 4, 1965 1965.

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 84 Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll 1975, photographs, suite of 13 gelatin silver prints on fibre paper, each mounted on museum board, colophon page, in clothbound clamshell case, each photograph 28 x 35.5 cm.

197 interaction with her vagina, Schneemann brings into question prevalent religious and spiritual attitudes to woman’s body, predicated through Western–European traditions and elsewhere as vulgar and obscene. Schneemann’s performance suggests that the wisdom that exists within her, within the cells of her body as woman can be drawn out into the external. In so doing her embodied knowledge is equal to the logic and reason representative of the masculine mind, advocated as superior in many religious teachings and text. In this way Schneemann sacralises the body through a physical display of defiance against such cultural and religious norms inscribed on and in her body. Schneemann balances this duality of inside and outside, body and mind, woman and man, profane and sacred. For as Schneemann states:

I thought of the vagina in many ways--physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual power. This source of interior knowledge would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship.332

Similarly, the vagina is utilised in this exhibition, not to suggest a predictive universalism, but rather to cross thresholds of taboo in much the same way that thealogians traversed geographical terrains to discover interior sites of female divine such as cave, temple and sacred spring.333 Allowing a crossover to occur between the God-as-She and the use of the vagina as a gendered icon symbolic of creativity and women’s empowerment.

By shaping abstract representations of the vagina’s exterior with its evocative enfolding of skin, flesh and the body I create dimensional expression from the digital fabric, reminiscent of the central core imagery developed in the 1960s and 1970s and upon which feminist artists drew until a restrictive critique of biological reductionism became prevalent in the 1980s.334 The use of the vaginal motif here as an icon of devotion, references the legacy of second wave feminists, participates in a current revival and regeneration of core symbolism for women, 198 as well as highlights dichotomies between private and public, sacred and profane, personal and communal and, through the placement of the vagina within a devotional setting, allows the symbolism of the genital features of women to be celebrated and revered.

I have built my perambulatory nomadic home inside the God-as-She for the last three-years, exploring each site as rooms built to petition and praise God-as- Woman. Whether fashioned by cave walls, marble columns, or bricks cut by hand, organic or constructed, each place God-as-She is indwelling has meant that I have experienced her presence. In these moments, I was not absent but present, with the flow between the motion of pilgrimage and the engaged responsiveness of arriving and indwelling heightened. Yet, this coalescence has also brought with it the acquisition and expansion of new skills.

These new skills were made manifest through varying techniques of art production: weaving, casting, mould-making, and working with clay. These were forms and methodologies of art making that I had not previously attempted. Each experience of a new medium can be likened to a new way of understanding the relationship between the sacred and myself. I began to open to new understandings about myself as an artist through the haptic and open-ended nature of the quest.

Multiple modes of production intermingle in my practice, each representative of different stages of the journey and the way each site offered itself to different creative appeals. For example, while in residence at Temple University, I learnt the tradition of weaving from textile designer Janell Wysock. In Athens, I learnt how to convert fabric forms and cast hands in the position of mudras into bronze. In Greece, I rode horses to look at the way various modes of transport effect pilgrimage as part of a two-and-a-half-hour performance titled Riding the pYnk Cosmos (figure 85). In Canada, I worked with watercolour and acrylic paint images designed to be transformed into embroideries (figures 86-88). Also in

199 Figure 85 Emma Rochester, Riding the pYnk Cosmos 2015, collaged photograph documenting 2.5-hour durational performance. Photographer Josephine Fagan for Emma Rochester. Image courtesy the artist.

Figure 86 Documentation of my watercolour paintings in process within the Gerin Lajoie studio at Leighton Artist’s Colony 2016. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, The Banff Centre for the Arts, 2016. 200 Figure 87 Documentation of studio and watercolour paintings by Emma Christina Lucia Rochester at Leighton Artist’s Colony 2016. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor, The Banff Centre for the Arts, 2016.

Figure 88 Emma Rochester with assistance from craftswoman Nancy Gruman, Translation of one watercolour artefact created at Leighton Artist’s Colony into embroidery on a test fabric not indicative of final fabric 2017, linen, metallic and cotton threads, 18 x 18cm. Photo courtesy the artists. 201 Canada, I created a group performance, accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s drum crafted of upcycled painted and dyed fabrics (figures 89–93). In France, I experimented with creating ceramic forms as symbolic investigations of perpetual movement and generative growth, after visiting shrines with strong associations to women’s creative potential as arising from the sea (figure 94).

This interdisciplinary combination of mediums woven together here is purposeful. It shows a deterritoralisation of place, bringing each segmented experience together into one, in much the same way as I as an individual woman connect discordant pilgrimage sites into the motion of the nomad. This final exhibition is a unification of artistic elements, of the various site-specific sacred spaces visited, and the information I have gleaned from the distinguished authors who heralded and advanced God-as-She as something that is possible to discuss today.

There is a term in ancient Greek culture called ekphrasis, which refers to a literary invitation, where the piece of writing encourages the reader to vividly enter the text as if they are physically part of the scene. The reader is invited by the writer to engage the imagination as if through personal experience. However, ekphrasis can be true or false, it can be misleading or real, but for the reader this was inconsequential; it was simply a matter of whether the experience could be sensed as if one was physically present.335 In the mid-eighteenth century, the ambiguity of ekphrasis was abhorred and strong cultural demand meant that the more accurate and truthful a text was, the better. Gone were the days of using ekphrasis for fantasy and/or the unearthly.336 Instead, the real was valued over the imagined. This marked change was due to a transition in its use from cultivating the imagination of the mind to a record of accurate detail, as well as a change in the use of its delivery. Originally, ekphrasis occurred in text that was read by an individual, but it changed to being a vivid presentation through spoken word to an audience. In the nineteenth century, the grand international tour gained popularity, and travellers would return to their homes with a great

202 Figure 89 Working in my Studio as part of the BAIR Winter program at The Banff Centre for the Arts 2015, photographic documentation. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor at The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Figure 90 Documentation of artist in the studio creating the skin for a Miriam’s drum using found and received pennies 2015. Photo courtesy Rita Taylor at The Banff Centre for the Arts.

203 Figure 91 Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s drum, Documentation of performance with focus on the use of a upcylced Miriam drum from self created fabrics 2015. Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Figure 92 Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s drum, Each Time the Circle Turns it is Not the Same: Women’s body and the sense of the sacred throughout history 2015. Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts Telus Studio, The Banff Centre for the Arts

204 Figure 93 Emma Rochester accompanied by Dana Sipos on a Miriam’s drum, Each Time the Circle Turns it is Not the Same: Women’s body and the sense of the sacred throughout history 2015, performance incorporating text and folk dance. Telus Studio, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Photo courtesy The Banff Centre for the Arts

205 Figure 94 Emma Rochester, Ceramic Forms Pertaining to Perpetual Motion and Generative Growth Created at Ateliers Four Winds, Aureille, Bouche de Rhone, France 2016, collage of video stills. Video still collage courtesy the artist.

206 desire to provide vivid accounts of artworks seen abroad. These oral accounts painted a picture of the masterpieces seen. This meant that many travellers relied on ekphrasis to convey accurate descriptions to those who wished to see the artworks as they themselves had seen them. Over time, ekphrasis was adopted as one of the main techniques of art history, although, as with all things, it has begun to morph and shift in its definition once again. Currently, it is considered to be a verbal description of a visual artwork through poetry or other means.337

Within the context of In Her Hands, I envision that the viewer has the opportunity to experience the traditional meaning of ekphrasis through the act of viewing aesthetic representations of a multitude of sacred sites. I evoke the sacred as gendered vividly through the artefacts so that one can feel them experientially. Through the positioning of artefacts—as well as the subjective nature of the objects themselves—I invite the viewer into a position of responsiveness, where they can exist between the worlds, lift the veil and touch the sacred in the ordinary through the process of ekphrasis.

The photographs stitched into fabric and into place provide signifiers, entry points, and portals into ekphrasis whereby the viewer is drawn into a state of engagement. Engagement is one of the core affirmative ethics for women I work with in my practice, for I create a conduit for engagement with my travel to these sites by selecting which photographs to exclude and include in the visual diaries that are present in the flesh of the sculptures and in the adorning fabric. Thus, the viewer is encouraged to vividly and physically connect with the concept of a non-normative, gendered comprehension of the sacred both through the content and positioning of artefacts.

Installation of In Her Hands

As the viewer enters the gallery multiple arrangements of artefacts are witnessed. To the left amulets and talismans taking the form of hands and

207 vaginal roses (as discussed previously) are carefully positioned on the raised platform (figure 95), to the immediate right glimpses of gold leather, translucent resin and a fibre figure are seen situated in the window display (figure 96). On the far right a procession of banners embroidered with heraldic designs in contrasting combinations of caramel linen and pale pink, oyster and/or gold fringing are situated midway up the gallery wall (figure 97). Throughout the front room of the gallery fabric sculptures representative of women pilgrims with body-positive vaginal motifs and accompanying printed silk crepe de chine fabric are scattered. Each form hangs from the gallery ceiling as if dancing, moving, resting, and/or contemplating on pilgrimage (figure 98 and 99). In the back gallery space a close grouping of large banners hangs. Draped from ceiling to floor, the space between the first two banners acts as an invitational gateway (figure 100). A doorway which invites the viewer to step between and enter into the next section of the gallery space, which is mysteriously dimly lit.

The formation of artefacts created for In Her Hands is comprised of multiple modes of production, interlinking skills acquired throughout sojourns to artist- in-residences as well as the multi-sensory nature of pilgrimage. For example, the fibre forms representative of women on pilgrimage as discussed previously, are both textile art as well as autobiographical photo journaling. The movement of the crepe silk which hangs luxuriously from some of these forms references ceremonial and lay costume, allowing the viewer to imagine a woman’s scarf blowing in the breeze, a dress circulating in dance, a ceremonial alter cloth and/or the way draperies of fabric are used to adorn God-as-Woman in her sculptural forms at the sites themselves.

Simultaneously, the collapsing of skills and senses into artefacts is also emulated in the structure of the exhibition, so that the layout mirrors the geographical features of the many pilgrimage sites I visited. This is so because the viewer’s focus is divided in much the same way that natural and constructed pilgrimage sites differ in their depiction of the sacred. The combination of smaller installations in the gallery come together to represent one sacred space as a

208 Figure 95 Emma Rochester, Documentation of Amulets and Talismans consisting of Three Dimensional Mudras and Yoniroses on the raised platform in the exhibition space of “In Her Hands” 2017, epoxy resin, pigments and colour dye, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner.

Figure 96 Emma Rochester, Documentation of Front Window Display for the exhibition “In Her Hands” at POP Gallery 2017, Gold leather, fabric sculpture and resin amulet, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner. 209 Figure 97 Emma Rochester, Documentation of Three in One Artefacts. That are Simulatnaeosly Processional Banners, Healing Cloths and Ceremonial Robes “In Her Hands” 2017, Custom-designed print on upholstery weight cotton, caramel gold linen, digitised embroideries, embroidery thread and tri colour fringing, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner.

Figure 98 Emma Rochester, Documentation of Sculptural Fibre Forms of Women on Pilgrimage with Emphasis on Vaginal Motifs in Reference to 1970s Core Feminist Imagery for the Exhibition “In Her Hands” 2017, Custom-designed print on upholstery weight cotton and silk crepe, block colour cotton material, synthetic hair, and haberdashery thread, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner.

210 Figure 99 Emma Rochester, Documentation of the Front Room of the Gallery Space for graduating exhibition “In Her Hands” with Emphasis Placed on the Secluded and Narrow Entrance to the Rear Gallery on Left Side of the Back Wall 2017, Textile sculpture, haberdashery thread, stuffing, wood, wire and upholstery weight cotton, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner.

Figure 100 Emma Rochester, Documentation of Textile Form and Passageway of Banners in Graduating Exhibition “In Her Hands” 2017, Textile sculpture, haberdashery thread, stuffing, wood, wire and upholstery weight cotton, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Carl Warner.

211 whole, yet include many individuated features in just the same way as pilgrim sites have multiple shrines and/or pathways in each locale. Each sacred site has separated and multiple places of prayer, repose, and reflection at any one given site.

Yet each artefact is a microcosm of this notion of multiple foci; for instance the processional banners featured on the right-hand side of the front-gallery suggest this multiplicity of pilgrimage stations and act as markers (Figure 97). Each banner has a distinct embroidered image. A uniformity of design is apparent as each banner has an outline of the scallop-shell embroidered onto it. This linear shell is symbolic of the way-showing marker on the Camino de Santiago. The Camino, referred to previously, is important here for the trail ran at the back of the AIR Atelier Four Winds (where I made the ceramic pieces that feature in the video artefacts in the back section of the gallery) and I had the opportunity to walk on this sacred pathway numerous times throughout my creative research stay. Each time I walked on a small portion of the Camino I was uncertain what would greet me, whether it be new emerging features in the terrain and/or pilgrims passing by with their walking-sticks and backpacks. Each pilgrim progressed by scanning for the next scallop shell symbol, whether it be painted on top of a rock or sign-point, as the trail snaked through the landscape.

Inside the embroidered outline of the scallop shell a different scene is depicted on each banner. This inner territory features a womanly amorphous form in a variety of landscapes, using archetypal symbolism that speaks to the central core visual vocabulary generated by early second wave feminists to represent concepts relating to God-as-Woman. More specifically this 1960s and 1970s Goddess aesthetic includes references to caves, spirals, venus shells, bees, tunnels, the ocean and water in all forms. These motifs are dispersed across the banners and make up the scenery in which the female form undertakes her pilgrimage. Placed in the context of the many artefacts installed in the front gallery these processional banners provide a sense of order due to their uniformity.

212 Moreover these processional banners are designed to be walked past, one step after the other so that each marker becomes a stop or pause on the journey for the viewer. This reflects the way in which markers such as these, move the viewer towards new and diverse landscapes. Each of the linen banners is trimmed with fringing, representing the connections of flesh to earth, the rays of the sun, and echoing the sun-burst like lines found within the scallop shell itself.

On the dividing wall between front and back galleries transparent hands are suspended. These brightly coloured hands in fleshy pinks and browns look as if they are a combination between an iceypole (popsicle) and sweat. The glistening self-lubricating surface of the hands merges the past and the present by referencing talismans and votives, alongside the colours of candy and the sweet relief of iceypoles consumed en route to pilgrimage sites under the heat of a foreign sun. The impression that these hands are sweating taps into notions of a primal life force and the physicality of pilgrimage. The viewer’s instinct to pick the hands up, despite the fact that they are hanging, speaks to the desire for a tactile experience and the wish to hold in their hands that which had touched the sacred and/or to hold in their hands the hands of the other.

For me this tactile response is accompanied by a sense of flow in the spaces between all the artefacts in the exhibition, and this is just as important as the objects themselves. The spatial layout is a travelling space, one where the viewer is invited to move from one arrangement of artefacts to the next. This allows a perambulation through the gallery by the viewer, whether it be a physical or projected interaction. This viewer-led way of interacting with the exhibition mimics my long durational performance which was cyclical rather than linear. I specifically returned to selected pilgrimage sites a multitude of times rather than simply progressing one to the next in a linear manner. Hence the viewer visits multiple arrangements synonymous with the theme of the patterns of pilgrimage, the female body and the hand.

213 Due to the specificity of the trinity of core motifs: the hand, the female body, and patterns of nomadic pilgrimage, artefacts were carefully selected before being placed in the gallery environ. The embodied nature of the space affirms this focus through the use of sensory stimulus that is more than ocular, in the use of frankincense and pine essential oil, which wafts between the two rooms. The sensations provided through smell, movement, the space between objects, emptiness and the unseen artefacts in the back section of the gallery is designed to appeal on an unconscious level to each viewer as they move through the exhibition space.

The use of a ramp to move up and into the next level of the gallery, passing between the two digital hangings, enhances the demarcation line between the front and back gallery spaces. The ramp is used here to evoke a sense of transition where the physical act of the viewer moving upwards and into the next gallery space, is not a secular act but rather a participation in the construction of sacred space. This act of passing from the mundane to the reverent is reinforced by the low light and the serried placement of hanging banners.

By positioning the hangings in consecutive order, they resemble temple columns, creating a tunnel-like effect that is mimicry for a woman’s vagina, processional hall, cathedral and/or cave. Movement through this constructed space is specifically guided. The navigation of space is in contrast to the front room of the gallery, for the viewer is led through the narrowed sacred space rather than following a freeform route of perception. Hence, the aligned position of the banners creates a passage-way that evokes a sense in the viewer that they too are moving on pilgrimage, participating in a sensuous sacred journey.

The digital hangings lead the viewer deeper into the gallery until the form of a priestess with strange, insect-like qualities is revealed. The use of the bee as motif is continued from the smaller fringed banners in the front-room, and the stinger of the bee can be likened to the large vagina motif that features randomly

214 throughout all of the stuffed fibre forms. In this dark and mysterious section of the gallery, where waves of aroma puff at the interval rate of heartbeats, the viewer emerges from between the two-dimensional digital hangings and discovers the fullness of the bodily form in this textile artefact.

When the viewer reaches the end of the hallway of banners and turns around to return to the front gallery they face a colonnade of seemingly blank-backed canvases. However, the negative space of the canvases are only illusory, for what at first appears as blank is upon closer inspection a faded, concealed, hidden duplicate. As the viewer moves towards the entrance, light shines through the fabric allowing the imagery on the front to penetrate to the back and is visible in a more subtle form. Hence the digital hangings become as fading memories; fragments of sacred travels contrasting to the bright postcard-like profusion of imagery on the front evoking the realm of the profane. The banners also indicate how memories function, demonstrating the way that memories shift and fade as they travel with the pilgrim back into the complications and necessities of the everyday world. Each experienced moment softens in its memorial presence, thwarting the vibrancy of memory. Only upon returning to the everyday realm does the viewer understand that what exists at a sacred site is never fully revealed nor replicable. The inherent mystery of pilgrimage with its mystic associations and unpredictable nature of appealing to the emotions and sensory experience of one pilgrim and not to the next is evident in the subtle imagery that plays across these canvases.

This contrast between seen and unseen, found and lost, vibrant and faded is reinforced by the reduced street noise in the gallery, which gives a sense of pink noise. Pink noise is often associated with the sounds heard inside a woman’s womb and as such is felt to be more soothing as many sounds are softer and lower. This reduced ambient noise helps to heighten the feeling of moving into a devotional site where the sexuate can be felt as sacred.

215 The darkened gallery setting, the architectural use of banners, reduced noise and timed bursts of aroma allows a multi-sensory way of interacting with the work. Adding to this are video artefacts that are installed beyond the processional tunnel of banners. These video pieces are stitched together in a L shape across the right side of the gallery, enclosed by the large-scale banners behind the viewing point, which create an intimate space for contemplation. The layout generates a sense of an interior chamber (whether it be of the womb, a shrine and/or of the heart) complete with a place to repose. The length of the video works with their silent, mesmerising and simple movement repeated over time, creates a mood of mindfulness, meditation, and devotional focus. Resin and/or ceramic artefacts created as part of my nomadic artist residencies are the core foci of each video. Situated in contrasting ecological settings, each artefact is caressed by the natural elements of water or wind. Flickering motion brings each ceramic or resin artefact to life; animating each one as a signifier of the power of growth and creativity analogous with woman.

Finally, on entering and exiting the exhibition, the front windows create an enclosure, a boundary, a transparent demarcation between the ordinary and that which is revealed. Many people who walked past the gallery pressed their faces up to the window glass, leaving breath impressions and traces of touch on the pane of glass. The gallery became a brief pause on the different journeys of these passersby; but an echo of my project travels with them.

The viewers became witnesses to the sacralisation of space by a scholar and artist who travelled into the realm of women, spirituality and art to investigate the ways in which nomadic pilgrimage could empower women. “In Her Hands” thus becomes a sensuous offering to those who enter the gallery space and/or remain viewing from the outside in. This need to see, witness and experience by the viewer creates a new collection of memories of God-as-She.

I also hope that by perambulating at will throughout the installation, the viewer feels the opportunity to corporeally disconnect from the ordinary and to enact

216 the sacred. By following an inviting pathway that mirrors pilgrimage patterns, the space affords the viewer moments of rhythmic reflection and acknowledgement. Through moving in the space, the viewer becomes (consciously or unconsciously) a participant enacting symbolic communal yet individuated motion. For each time a viewer enters the gallery space, the installation is repeatedly sacralised through the act of witnessing. The presence of the viewer affirms my offering.

The artefacts and exhibitions outlined in this chapter were created in response to experiences that affirmed the completeness of my being as woman, and cultural texts that became embodied as if inscribed on the surface of my skin.338 I was becoming as a thealogical book, incorporating that which I was witness to both in text, performance and through artefacts. I was filled with a desire to reinterpret the many empowering and regenerative images I had seen. Both static forms from the past as well as my interaction with women who experienced altered states of consciousness, and who demonstrated articulated gestures of liberation and freedom—perhaps for the first time in their lives— played evocatively through my body and mind as both imagination, memory, and sensation.

217 291 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference, 1. 292 Lee, "Goddess Religion and Women's Spirituality: A Christian Feminist Response," 20. 293 Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (New York: Viking Press, 1991). 294 Carol P. Christ, "Ecofeminism and Process Philosophy," Feminist Theology 14, no. 3 (2006): 296. 295 Braidotti, Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti, 6. 296 Robert D. Morritt, Stones That Speak (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). 297 Kate Davidson, "Soft Sculpture: Annette Messager," National Gallery of Australia, http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/softsculpture/Default.cfm?IRN=8570&BioArtistIRN=12175&MnuI D=3&ViewID=2. 298 Umberto Boccioni et al., "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painters," in Futurism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 65–66. 299 Christ, "Can Good Theology Change the World? Part 3: Embodied Theology by Carol P. Christ". and Carol P. Christ, "What If There Are Sex Differences But Biology Is Not Destiny?" Women’s Studies and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University, https://feminismandreligion.com/2015/02/16/there-may-be-sex-differences-but-biology-does- not-have-to-be-destiny-by-carol-p-christ/. 300 Kathryn Sullivan Kruger, Weaving the Word: The Metaphorics of Weaving and Female Textual Production (London: Associated University Presses, 2001), 53. 301 Jaime Schultz, "The Physical Is Political: Women's Suffrage, Pilgrim Hikes and the Public Sphere," The International Journal of the History of Sport 27, no. 7 (2010). 302 Karen Hurley et al., "Futures Studies and Feminism," Futures 40, no. 4 (2008). 303 Jennie Klein, "Waiting for Performance," PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 22, no. 3 (2000). 304 Ivana Milojević, "Timing Feminism, Feminising Time," Futures 40, no. 4 (2008). 305 Seager and Nelson, Companion to Feminist Geography (Blackwell Companions to Geography; Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge; Natalie Oswin, "Critical Geographies and the Uses of Sexuality: Deconstructing Queer Space," Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 1 (2008). 306 McDowell and Sharp, A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography 307 McDowell, "Doing Gender: Feminisms, Feminists and Research Methods in Human Geography." 308 Christ, "Cutting Edges." 309 Ibid., 140. 310 Christian Wolff, "Euripides' "Iphigenia among the Taurians": Aetiology, Ritual, and Myth," Classical Antiquity 11, no. 2 (1992). 311 Deborah Lyons, Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 312 Elizabeth A. Manwell, "Girls in Bears' Clothing in Greek Myth and Disney/Pixar's Brave," in Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy, ed. Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 267. 313 Sara Matera, "Gaia Hypothesis: The Metaphor of Planet Earth as a Living System," ed. Francesca Ervas and Massimo Sangoi (Urbino, pU: ISONOMIA – Epistemologica, 2014); Colleen Mack-Canty, "Third-Wave Feminism and the Need to Reweave the Nature/Culture Duality," NWSA Journal 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2004). 314 Sian Lewis, The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook (Abingdon, OX: Routledge, 2005), 25. 315 Marguerite Rigoglioso, "Matriarchal Spirituality and Virgin Birth," in The Time is Ripe: Matriarchal Politics Conference (Switzerland: Matriarchal Politics Conference, 2011). 316 The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 317 "Matriarchal Spirituality and Virgin Birth."; Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 218 318 Mary F. Foskett, Virgin Conceived : Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), 3. 319 Sarah Nicholson, "Neither God nor Goddess: Why Women Need an Archetype of the Self," Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 7, no. 2 (2012); Penelope Deutscher, "'The Only Diabolical Thing About Women...': Luce Irigaray on Divinity," Hypatia 9, no. 4 (1994); Rountree, Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist Ritual-Makers in New Zealand. 320 Christ, "Cutting Edges." 321 Ibid. 322 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference, 27. 323 Patti Shanks, "Fragment Weavers and Holy Patchers: Narrative and Memory in Cloth" (MA thesis Graduate School University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005), 22. 324 Günter Berghaus, “Body Art, Ritualism and Neo-Shamanic Performance,” in Avant-garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies (Bassingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 325 Hilary Robinson, “Beauty, the Universal, the Divine: Irigaray’s Re-Valuings,” in Women Artists and Modernism, ed. Katy J. Deepwell (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1998), 159. 326 Shirley Ardener, “A Note on Gender Iconography,” in The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, ed. Pat Caplan (London: Routledge, 1987). 327 Amelia Jones, “The ‘Pollockian Performative’ and the Revision of the Modernist Subject,” in Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 99. 328 Clare Johnson, Femininity, Time and Feminist Art (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 71. 329 Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon, “Identity Politics in Photography and Performance Art,” in Modern Art: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2005). 330 Jayne Wark, Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). 331 Clare Johnson, Femininity, Time and Feminist Art. 332 Carolee Schneemann, “Interior Scroll 1975.” http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/interiorscroll.html 333 Katy J. Deepwell, “Introduction,” in Women Artists and Modernism (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1998), 11. 334 Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon, “Identity Politics in Photography and Performance Art.” 335 Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, Routledge, 2009). 336 Janice Hewlett Koelb, The Poetics of Description: Imagined Places in European Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 337 Emily Bilman, Modern Ekphrasis (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2013). 338 For more details on female subjectivity and skin please see Kathleen Just, "The Texture of Her Skin: A Studio Project Excavating and Reweaving Visions of Female Subjectivity" (PhD dissertation, Monash University, 2013).

219 Chapter 6: Conclusion–Memorial, Spiritual Recreation and Personal Iconography as Active Remembrance

To become means fulfilling the wholeness of what we are capable of being... But as long as woman lacks a divine made in her image she cannot establish her subjectivity or achieve a goal of her own. She lacks an ideal that would be her goal or path in becoming. —Luce Irigaray339

In 1979, Jill Orr made a powerful visual statement in Bleeding Tree (figure 101) that exemplified the close bond that exists between women’s bodies and the Earth. It was part of a series of performances that Orr undertook where she positioned her body in the natural environ so as to create an empathetic reaction from the viewer. Using her body as an “emotional barometer”, she expressed the states experienced by particular trees as they underwent both natural and unnatural life cycles.340 Here Orr used her body not as decoration but as indicator, embodying Eavan Boland’s belief, “Images are not ornaments; they are truths.”341

Ecofeminist artists espouse thealogical principles that the Earth and women are inextricably linked. The subjugation of the Earth and women are analogous,342 as exemplified by the collaborative group Future Feminism, discussed in the Introduction. This group promotes thirteen tenets that suggest a new feminist framework for a female future.343 Each of the tenets is inscribed onto colossal rose quartz crystal discs, allowing each luminous pale pink mineral circle to contain the new manifesto, presenting a set of beliefs to define current contemporary thinking about feminism and its role for the future, such as ‘The subjugation of woman and the earth is one and the same” (figure 102).

When feminist scholars and artists alike focus on the parallels between women's cyclical bodies and the seasonal and lunar cycles, there is often a call to nature- based religions.344 In Woman Rising/Spirit (1973, figure 103), Mary Beth Edelson expands on this cyclical interrelationship inherent in women’s bodies and the primacy of landscape, epitomising these themes. Immediately, we see that in

220 Figure 101 Jill Orr, Bleeding Trees 1979, performance for the camera photographed on 35ml slide. Photographer Elizabeth Campbell for Jill Orr. Photo courtesy Jill Orr. © Jill Orr.

221 Figure 102 Johanna Constantine, Bianca Casady, Kembra Pfahler, Antony Hegarty and Sierra Casady, Installation view of Future Feminism 2014. Photo courtesy The Hole NYC.

In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 103 Mary Beth Edelson, Woman Rising/Spirit 1973, artwork on photograph using oil paint, ink, and china marker, 25.4 x 30.48cm.

222 untying deity from its bondage to a Supreme male divinity, women artists and thealogians alike attempt to neutralise the suppressive ideology of masculine visual constructs of the sacred by representing God-as-Woman and discovering their generative bodies as divine.345 Poet and playwright, Nto Zake Shange’s expressive statement, “I found god in myself and I loved her. I loved her fiercely” highlights a return to a positive understanding of woman’s body and its plenitude as representative of the divine.346

Such fruition and defiance are similarly expressed in the activist artefacts documenting the performances of Cheri Gaulke This Is My Body (1982, figure 104) and Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard, The Expulsion from the Temple/Nude Female Christ (1969, figures 105 and 106).347 They reveal the physicality of woman’s form in relation to images of God in the Biblical traditions. Both artefacts exemplify responses to the question which many feminist theorists still ask which has a trickle-down effect to women's subjugation in society: how can we free women from a dogmatic religious view? Nto Zake Shange’s statement above represents the diversity of women’s experience for, as Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ suggest, “The experience of being a woman is inseparable from being the kind of woman one is.”348 Revealing myself as woman and the constructs that shape my point of view were outlined in Chapter Two: Embodiment–A Haptic Methodology.

Thealogians, artists, sociologists, poets, academics, musicians, and archaeologists such as Mary Daly, Carol P. Christ, Mary Beth Edelson, Cynthia Eller, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Judith Plaskow went in search of a notion of divinity that reflects the multitudinous ways in which women’s spirituality is expressed. They sought a new understanding of spiritual experience and identification with the sacred, which is part of a lived experience of sacrality, by undertaking pilgrimages both virtual and real, as explored in Chapter Three: Pilgrimage. Feminist thealogians and artists continue to call for a new understanding that is in alignment with Maaike de Haardt’s reflections of a living religion:

223 Figure 104 Cheri Gaulke, This Is My Body 1982, 35 mm slide of performance. Photographer Sheila Ruth for Cheri Gaulke. Collection of The Otis College of Art and Design Library. Photo courtesy the artist. Photo courtesy the artist.

224 In order to comply with copyright these images have been removed.

Figures 105 and 106 Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard, The Expulsion from the Temple/Nude Female Christ 1969, documentation of performance May 29th at Børsen in Copenhagen.

225 not only about transformative reinterpretations of “faith” (scriptures, history, dogmas, ethics, and ecclesia) but are also about seeking to understand how women (and men) negotiate power and identity in ordinary life and how they strategically appropriate religious practices to maneuver in everyday encounters, thereby reshaping their own participation in society, culture, and religion. Historians and anthropologists of religion speak of “lived religion” in this respect.349

Although an understanding of God-as-Woman is not new practice, it is steeped in a hidden tradition: "Women's texts have, for the most part, been woven in secret ways, hard to decipher, dangerous if discovered by the wrong people, or merely misread, misunderstood."350 In Unicorn (1970–72, figure 107), Rebecca Horn explores the mythopoetic meta-narratives culturally imposed on women’s bodies. Horn crafted an exaggerated unicorn’s horn to be worn atop the head of a woman while she walked across a field. Originally intended to be performed by a friend, the work was executed by Horn. Self-exposure and a heightened sense of awareness were paramount to the ideals of the artwork. Horn reflects on the morning of the performance, saying:

Her consciousness electrically impassioned; nothing could stop her trance-like journey: in competition with every tree and cloud in sight...and the blossoming wheat caressing her hips.351

This trance-like journey draws reference to the purity, chastity and innocence of the unicorn that Horn plays with in the work to reflect on the historical and spiritual implications of women’s interconnectedness with the Earth. Thus, Horn highlights two impasses: firstly, the disjuncture between women and the identification with the spiritual. Secondly, the similarities between what occurs to women and the landscape, for both begin as innocents. By using trance states in her work, Horn generates a sense of moving and shifting between the worlds of the seen and unseen, real and divine.

The tradition of God-as-She has never disappeared entirely, just as the symbolism of the unicorn’s purity is still relevant today, but like water flowing underground, rises to the surface with the ebb and flow of changing civilizations

226 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 107 Rebecca Horn, Unicorn 1970-72, video still, model wears unicorn made out of wood, fabric and metal.

227 and cultural attitudes between the sexes. Marija Gimbutas’s research on the existence of an ancient mother Goddess is often called upon by feminist thealogians as evidence of a pre-patriarchal, matrilineal, women-centred spiritual culture which predates the Greco Roman religion and indeed Christianity.352 Her works Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe 6500–3500 B.C. (1982) Language of the Goddess (1991), and Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence (1998), though highly controversial, propose the existence of a Great Mother Goddess. Whether this goddess existed may never be known, but Gimbutas’s research is important to consider for two reasons.

Firstly, it represents a period of exploration within archaeology whereby archaeologists began to seek out alternative forms of the sacred in order to define and describe sites from an affirmative feminist viewpoint. Secondly, the subsequent adoption of her work by the feminist movement of the 1970s and her continued support in feminist spiritual traditions today reflects a trend in feminist culture and scholarship whereby new representations of deity were and are sought in order to empower women, as explored in Chapter Four: Affirmative Ethics. Gimbutas’s work is an empowering crucible, which opens up potential to explore alternative images of deity.

Searching for deity within and without as a means to affirm the female body and soul became part of a wider search in which feminists sought out ancient, empowering imagery and applied it to modern life. For example, the use of multi- breasted imagery associated with Diana of Ephesus once located in the Temple of Artemis at Miniatürk Park, Istanbul, is incorporated into artefacts for performance in daily life situations, such as Louise Bourgeois’s Latex Costume (1970, figure 108) and Anne Gauldin and Denise Yarfitz’s The Waitress Goddess Diana (1978, figures 109 and 110). Drawing on the work of Anne Cranny-Francis in “Gender Studies: Terms and Debates”, Elizabeth Wulf states:

The male sex/masculine gender embraces the positive side of the opposition and the female sex/feminine gender, the negative side. Not only does this work to position women and feminine attributes 228 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 108 Louise Bougeoise, Latex Costume 1970, 35mm slide documenting performance.

229 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figures 109 and 110 Anne Gauldin and Denise Yarfitz, The Waitress Goddess Diana 1978. 35mm slide of performance. Collection of The Otis College of Art and Design Library.

230 negatively, it also works to position those who exhibit attributes not socially attached to their biological sex negatively. Traditionally, women have been excluded from ways of being heroic because the attributes attached to heroism are determined to be masculine attributes.353

If deity represents a divine ideal or aspiration, it is therefore possible to parallel thealogical studies with work relating to heroism in feminist studies. In this way, Gimbutas becomes both hero and a seeker of the heroic. She inspires artists to interweave archaeological images of deity that support feminist ideals into their own art practices. This can be seen in Hannah Wilke’s Venus Pareve, commonly known as Venus Hero (1982–84, figure 111) through the depiction of broken statues of the Roman goddess. Anne Gauldin and Cheri Gaulke’s The Malta Project (1978, figure 112) illustrates this new alternative language of the divine through bodily gesture and the use of symbolic imagery in an archaeological setting.

The Malta Project is just one of the early spiritual feminist artefacts used to illustrate, generate, sustain and develop a growing feminist vocabulary.354 Use of the spiral, vaginal iconography, labyrinth, breasts, body, and the mind–body continuum are no longer passé codes designed to fill a void; instead, they are representative of a process of codifying and transmitting a non-patriarchal set of visual symbols and aesthetic language. 355 Ana Mendieta’s Labyrinth of Venus (1982, figure 113), The Gestare Art Collective’s Barbara's Womb Walk for Nané on the snow… (2011, figure 114), and Solange Pessoa’s Orange Paintings (2011– 12, figure 115) are representative of this affective response. Artists who draw on this vocabulary may consciously or unconsciously become activists, as exemplified by artist Kubra Khademi who walked for eight minutes in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 26 February 2015, wearing a hyper stereotypical suit of armour depicting exaggerated female anatomy (figures 116 and 117).356

The use of central core imagery as well as associations between women’s bodies and nature reflects a process of reorientation, reclamation, affirmation and restoration. The thealogical point of view that women, men and all living things

231 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 111 Hannah Wilke, Venus Pareve 1982–84, painted plaster of Paris, Each 25.1 x 13.2 x 8.4cm.

Figure 112 Anne Gauldin and Cheri Gaulke, The Malta Project 1978, 35mm slide, documentation of performance at prehistoric temples in Malta. Photo credit Mario Damato. Photo courtesy the artists.

232 In order to comply with copyright this image has been removed.

Figure 113 Ana Mendieta, La Vivificación de la Carne: El Laberinto de Venus Series (The Vivification of the Flesh: Labyrinth of Venus Series) 1982.

Figure 114 Gestare Art Collective, Barbara's Womb Walk for Nané on the snow covered campus of Southern Illinois University Carbondale where she teaches 2011. Documentation of performance by R. Michael Fisher on February 6, 2011 between 4:10-5pm CST. Photo courtesy Barbara Bickel.

233 Figure 115 Solange Pessoa, Untitled 2011-2012, clay on vinyl, 12 panels, each 200 x 90cm. Photo courtesy Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Photo by Chi Lam.

234 Figure 116 Kubra Khademi, Kubra Khademi was surrounded by a mainly male crowd, which threw insults and stones during her walk 2015. Photographer Naim Karimi. Photo courtesy the artist.

Figure 117 Kubra Khademi, In this Thursday, March 5, 2015 photo, Afghan performance artist Kubra Khademi talks about her art piece, a suit of armor with large breasts and buttocks, during an interview with The Associated Press in Kabul, Afghanistan. Khademi donned the suit of armor and wore it on the streets of Kabul to protest Afghanistan’s endemic harassment 2015. Photo credit Massoud Hossaini. Photo courtesy the artist.

235 can achieve affirmative liberation through thealogy both then and now was also explored in Chapter Four,357 where the process of communally shared, actively engaged responses towards the “bad feelings” at play in male-orientated religious discourse was reflected upon.358 In sum, artists and scholars alike seek to translate the negative effects of patriarchal meta-narratives inherent in all the world faiths into affirming action through the creation of a visual discourse around God-as-Woman.

The negative affects of theological thinking are transformed through a process of reorientation, reclamation, and affirmation. What is important to note here is that the alternative language generated has provided women with a voice through the use of “alternative hegemonic representational codes”.359 Foundational feminist theorists such as Luce Irigaray, Rosi Braidotti and Julia Kristeva, as well as thealogical authors and artists, gave rise to a new form of representation for women through a new language of the sacred, as Jennie Klein notes:

Feminist spirituality allowed rather than prevented feminist performance artists to articulate a radical reading of the female body as the basis for a feminist consciousness that in turn produced a (feminist) model for an engaged form of art making. Far from derailing activist art, feminist spirituality made it possible.360

Being engaged with the codes developed by early feminist foremothers, the original intent of this PhD project was to seek out patriarchal-free, non- hierarchical sites in the landscape. This was a continuation of artistic research and production I had undertaken previously where I investigated feminist geographies. As outlined in Chapter Five: In Her Hands, I desired to dwell in and between thealogical feminist geographies. As each pilgrimage built on the other, so that I embodied the wandering of the nomad, I experienced terrains as identified by early feminists through the lens of the artistic researcher. I realised that the vast number of landscapes considered thealogical could be experienced in different modalities based on the prominent features encountered at each newly revised gendered site of reverence. 236 Firstly, it was apparent that many of the sites identified were based on the belief of ecofeminists and thealogians alike that the Earth is allegory for woman, God, and/or Gaia, as exemplified by the Neolithic excavations I visited. In contrast, other newly revised alternative sites of gendered devotion were visited to view sculptural artefacts representative of, and infused with, the power of God-as-She, such as Black Madonna icons and statues of Aphrodite in Greek temples.

Yet, these elements of deity and landscape were complementary and in many cases both elements were found overlapping at a site. For instance, an icon may be inside a cave or in a temple which was positioned close by. Artist Elena Stonaker speaks to this interweaving of environ and sculptural artefact in her Artist as Muse series (2015, figure 118). The interaction created by this shifting of focus between representational form and organic primordial life force as Maternal meant that I used my body as the laboratory for research in ways in which I had not anticipated. I was witness to central core imagery developed and espoused by spiritual feminist artists and theorists in the flesh and at goddess sites. Cave as womb, tunnel as vulval opening, and the multi-breasted Minoan goddess statues are just some examples of the long list of thealogical terrains and artefacts I undertook pilgrimage between and to, experiencing God-as-Woman whilst researching on the move.

As I moved in and between territories of God-as-She I realised that my data collection was more than investigation: it was embodied performance. I created a moving site of resistance to patriarchy and a simultaneous homage to God-as- Woman through research in motion. The PhD project became a form of physical activism whereby I honoured the groundbreaking work of early feminist foremothers, as well as contemporary women artists. My journeying became a memorial, a spiritual recreation whereby the research as performance and the exhibitions inspired by my experiences were undertaken with reference to the past to ensure that God-as-Woman does not remain reduced to abstract male- orientated religious paradigms. More than this, my activist durational

237 Figure 118 Elana Stonaker, Artist as Muse in Ojai with Buckley 2015, digital print featuring various textile elements, beads and paint. Photo courtesy Justin Tyler Close.

238 performance allowed me to invent a personal iconography reflecting my own experiential and affective responses to a nomadic exploration of sacred woman’s sites. These subjective responses are shared with exhibition audiences in a feminist affirmation of creativity and empowerment.

My project has a significant research outcome when seen within the broader context of current feminist revisioning which employs the empowering use of motifs relating to women’s capabilities and agency engaging with and building on the feminist aesthetic language generated by second wave feminists. More so, my continuous pilgrimage and research in motion through nomadic perambulations to newly revised alternative sites of gendered reverence generated significant new data about the ways in which affirmative ethics and affirmative activism can be utilised in a contemporary art setting and practice- led research. By acknowledging my corporeal sexual self-definition alongside thealogians and artists whom explored, and continue to explore, a new language of the sacred I generate new research production within the field of women, spirituality and art which is aligned with the current recuperation and reclamation of the sexuate difference of woman’s bodies in contemporary feminisms. Ultimately it is hoped that this work generates new understandings of the way in which moving through sacred sites which affirm women’s being, can empower not just one woman but many.

Through acknowledgement of alternative sites of gendered reverence it is possible to reflect on whether the allocation of space, whether it be architectural or organic, as a place of regeneration, repose and familiarity in the witness of God-as-She is empowering for women. In this way it is hoped that this exegesis and respective final exhibition will provide significant additional reflective data on the relationship between affirmative ethics and action, landscape, place and feminisms in regards to a feminist thealogical future.

239

339 Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, 61, 63–64. 340 Jill Orr, "Series / Exhibitions / Bleeding Trees," http://jillorr.com.au/e/bleeding-trees. 341 Eaven Boland, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1995), 152. 342 Maria F. Minickiello, "Women Environmental Artists: Unearthing Connections and Context" (PhD dissertation, Franklin Pierce University, 2011). 343 Anon, "Future Feminism". 344 Kruger, Weaving the Word; Teri C. McLuhan, The Way of the Earth: Encounters with Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought.(New York: Touchstone, 1994). 345 Jantzen, Becoming Divine, 67. 346 Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. 347 For further information on the concept of 'flourishing' please see Anne-Claire Mulder, "Divine Wo/Men Are Dignitaries: Seven Billion of Them 'Walk' in Dignity and Flourish," Feminist Theology 21, no. 3 (2013); Nané Ariadne Jordan, "Inspiriting the Academy: Weaving Stories and Practices of Living Women's Spirituality" (The University of British Columbia, 2011); Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, "The Idea of God in Feminist Philosophy," Hypatia 9, no. 4 (1994); Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 348 Plaskow and Christ, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, 3. 349 Maaike de Haardt, "Expanding the Concepts and the Field: Feminist Liberation Theology and Beyond," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27, no. 1 (2011): 118. 350 Heilbrun, Hamlets Mother and Other Women, 250. 351 Lucy Watling, "Rebecca Horn : Unicorn 1970–2 : Summary," (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/horn-unicorn-t07842) 352 Jennings, "Tending Hestia's Flame: Circumambulating the Sacred Feminine," 211. 353 Elizabeth Wulf, "Becoming Heroic: Alternative Female Heroes in Suzy Mckee Charnas' the Conqueror's Child," Extrapolation 46, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 120. 354 Robinson, "Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," 83–84, 87. 355 Sandra Ristovska, "Strategic Witnessing in an Age of Video Activism," Media, Culture & Society (2016). 356 Sylvia Tsai, "Extreme Sensitivity," Art and AsiaPacific, suppl. Almanac 11 (2016); Danielle Moylan, "Afghan Idol Throws Off Her Burqa and Belts out Domestic Violence Protest Song," Newsweek, 4 March 2016; Emma Graham-Harrison, "Afghan Artist Dons Armour to Counter Men's Street Harassment," The Guardian, 13 March 2015. 357 Elizabeth Stephens, "Bad Feelings," Australian Feminist Studies 30, no. 85 (2016). Christ, "Why Women, Men and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess: Remembering and Reflecting 35 Years Later." 358 Stephens, "Bad Feelings." 359 Jennie Klein, "The Ritual Body as Pedagogical Tool: The Performance Art of the Woman’s Building," in From Site to Vision: The Los Angeles Woman's Building in Contemporary Culture, ed. Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton (Los Angeles: Otis College of Art, 2011), 196. 360 Ibid.

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