Başkaldırı Olarak Feminist Sanat ve Temsiliyet Sorunu (Feminist Art as Revolt and Problem of Representation)

Feminist Art, whose influence has been felt since the 1960s, reached its peak in the 1970s. In the second half of Modernism, feminist art, while struggling with Modernism, initiated a new discussion on “gender” among other new tendencies, which expanded boundaries of visual arts while challenging its aesthetic praxis. Even today, validity of feminist art is hardly accepted by some groups. While creating necessary conditions to make woman an active subject, Feminist art has opened a door to new theoretical expansions and visual formations thanks to serious discussions that it leads and new concepts that it develops. It has created opportunities for women artists to represent themselves in every area of fine arts, which was thought to be men’s domain for centuries. At first, women artists have tried to make their voices heard by becoming organized and holding demonstrations and have tried to obtain equal representation opportunities as men with their artistic production. Under the influence of Poststructuralism and Post-modernism, based on their belief in the necessity of constituting an alternative discourse against patriarchal and masculine discourse, women artists left a strong impact on contemporary art with their works that stress differences both on theoretical and practical levels and that problematize representation. In this article, Feminist Art is analyzed with respect to the notion of ‘representation’ and women’s methods of and search for self-representation as an active agent in art have been discussed with examples in relation to sub-concepts such