Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke was an American feminist artist working with the body as major theme, more specifically her own body. As many feminist artists during the 70’s, Wilke used the performance as a central medium to develop her concepts, however she used different techniques like sculpture, photography, drawings, mixed media, and assemblage. The artist used her body or only an abstraction of it to develop her work. In many works, she used her own beauty to play with the concept of the “ model” and being able of the deconstruction stereotypes of femininity. In many pieces the artist used ceramic, latex or chewing gum to resemble vaginal forms. She used photography, drawings or other materials with these organic shapes. Wilke worked with different concepts like female identity, sexuality, stereotypes of femininity, pain, feelings and pleasure. In the last part of her life she documented and worked on a series of photographs “Intra-Venus” in which she recollected all the process of her disease, and her deterioration after treatment.