The Female Grotesque Revisited: Bodily Excess, Abjection, and Feminist Subversion in Contemporary Visual Art and Performance

Ananya Mukherjee, Prof. Riya Banerjee
Department of Visual Arts and Cultural Studies
Tata Institute of Social Sciences

1. Abstract

The notion of the “female grotesque” holds a significant role in feminist aesthetics and visual culture, especially concerning bodily excess, abjection, and the challenge to conventional femininity. This concept is grounded in theoretical perspectives put forth by scholars like Julia Kristeva, Mary Russo, and Barbara Creed, where the grotesque female form becomes a contested space where beauty, monstrosity, and power converge. Modern visual art and performance have breathed new life into this idea, highlighting bodies that defy aesthetic and societal norms through expressions of fluidity, fragmentation, vulnerability, and visceral embodiment. These works confront patriarchal ideals of containment and classical beauty, while also reimagining corporeality as dynamic, permeable, and politically charged. This article revisits the female grotesque in contemporary visual art and performance through an interdisciplinary approach that combines feminist theory, psychoanalytic criticism, visual culture studies, and performance theory. It explores how bodily excess and abjection serve as strategies of feminist resistance, questioning the historical marginalization of female corporeality within aesthetic discourse. By examining selected contemporary artworks and performances that emphasize abject bodies—from body horror aesthetics to participatory performances—the study contends that the grotesque is not just a depiction of distortion but a productive and transformative site of feminist subversion. The article places the female grotesque within the broader context of feminist art movements from the late twentieth century to the present, illustrating how artists use grotesque imagery to reclaim agency over the female body and destabilize the gaze. The grotesque, marked by openness, flux, and hybridity, becomes a medium through which women artists resist objectification and challenge binary distinctions between subject and object, self and other, beauty and repulsion. Ultimately, the research argues that the revival of the female grotesque in contemporary visual culture represents a radical reconfiguration of feminist aesthetics, where abjection and bodily excess become tools for expressing new forms of subjectivity and political critique.

2. Keywords

Grotesque femininity; excessive bodies; abjection; feminist art aesthetics; modern visual art; performance art; monstrous femininity; Kristeva; Mary Russo; feminist subversion; corporeality; visual culture; gender politics; abject body.