The Female Body in the Looking-Glass: Contemporary Art, Aesthetics and Genderland

In his writing on the 'mirror stage', the psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan describes the female body as lacking: a mere symptom of man, an object constructed by male desire. However, what happens if the woman in art follows Jean Baudrillard's advice to ‘swallow the mirror’, and is made real? What if the beautiful is inverted and becomes ugly; and the ugly becomes beautiful? These are the fundamental questions Basia Sliwinska poses in this important new enquiry into gender identity and the politics of vision in contemporary women’s art.