Through Her Eyes

Throughout history, the representation of women in art has often been shaped by predominantly male perspectives. Women’s bodies and experiences were filtered through the lens of male desire, idealized, sexualized, and presented as objects of consumption. However, in contemporary art, female artists have reclaimed their narrative, producing works that challenge these long-standing portrayals. This exhibition showcases six pieces that center on the female gaze, offering a fresh perspective on how women can be seen and represented—by women, for women.

In these works, these artists focus on strength, vulnerability, intimacy, and complexity, rejecting the performative depictions that have so often been associated with femininity. Whether celebrating the rawness of the female experience or exploring the nuances of identity and agency, these pieces confront traditional notions of beauty, power, and gender. Together, they not only offer an empowering shift in how women are depicted in art but also invite us to rethink the power of the gaze itself. Through these works, the female body becomes not just a subject to be looked at, but a dynamic force that actively shapes its own representation.

In her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey created the idea of the male gaze, which describes how women have been portrayed in art and media through the prism of male power and desire. The male subject is positioned as the active spectator, whereas women are objectified by the male gaze, which views them as passive objects to be observed, according to Mulvey. For ages, this dynamic has shaped visual culture and shaped the representation of women in art. Women are frequently idealized, sexualized, and presented as passive objects under the classic male gaze, perfected by their male makers but devoid of personality. (Mulvey)

This objectification of women has its origins in Western art history, where representations of beauty were more influenced by the male fantasy than by accurate representation. It was uncommon for women to be viewed as fully developed individuals in and of themselves in classical representations of the naked female, whether as a goddess, muse, or temptress. (Pollock) The social and cultural conventions of the time, which denied women agency and viewed them as inert objects to be admired or consumed, were instead mirrored in these depictions. The idea of women as passive and ornamental, existing solely for the enjoyment of the observer, became ingrained in art from Titian's Venus of Urbino to the Impressionists and Manet's paintings of the 19th century. (Nochlin)

Portraiture has historically been an instrument of power; the decisions of who gets painted, how they are portrayed, and who gets to paint them are all deeply symbolic. By restoring women to their full identities, these artists allow them to live independently from the limitations of male conceptions. In Margaret Evans Pregnant, Alice Neel paints a raw and unfiltered image of late pregnancy- a subject rarely given the spotlight in traditional Western art. Evans sits nude, her body undeniably real: fleshy, tired, and full of presence. There's no attempt to soften her features or romanticize the state she’s in. Instead, Neel embraces the fullness of the female form in all its complexity. Evans' unwavering gaze meets the viewer's; she looks straight at us, not as a thing to be adored but as a sentient human being. The power dynamic is completely reversed by this simple act of eye contact. We are now involved in the interaction rather than just passive spectators. Neel depicts emotional weight, physical work, and the reality of the mother’s body with empathy and strength without beautifying or eroticizing. The goal is not to please anyone. It's about being completely visible. (Bauer)

While Neel’s portrait confronts the viewer with the visceral realities of pregnancy and challenges idealized representations of the female form, Mickalene Thomas expands this resistance by directly confronting the historical erasure and objectification of Black women in Western art. In Les Trois Femmes Noires, Thomas reimagines Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, replacing the passive, nude white woman with three fully clothed Black women who assert their presence through direct eye contact and confident posture. The use of rhinestones, enamel, and vibrant color pushes against the expectation that “serious” art must be understated. What’s often dismissed as feminine excess or decorative flair becomes a tool for power. These women aren’t performing for anyone. They’re confident. Thomas’s work not only disrupts the aesthetic traditions of the European canon but also reframes notions of beauty, power, and identity through a distinctly contemporary and intersectional lens. (The Economist)

While these artists focus on reimagining individual identity and agency, Faith Ringgold expands the scope of the female gaze to include collective experience. In Dancing on the George Washington Bridge II, Ringgold shifts the narrative from solitary figures to a glowing portrayal of sisterhood and shared strength. The group of women, depicted mid-dance, embody joy, freedom, and resilience. A recurrent symbol in her work, the George Washington Bridge, stands for memory and possibilities; in this instance, it is converted into a platform for connection and empowerment. (Fine Arts Museum of San Fransisco) She blurs the boundaries between fine art and craft by combining silkscreening and quilting, thereby grounding the piece in female narrative and African American cultural traditions. With the feminine gaze, power is reframed as something created via movement, solidarity, and shared delight rather than as an individual perspective.

In the same way that Ringgold broadens the scope of the gaze to include sisterhood and communal identification, Catherine Opie focuses inward, providing a very intimate reinterpretation of the mother figure. She presents the audience with an unvarnished portrayal of motherhood. (Saketopoulou) Her direct gaze and bare torso center agency, challenging the viewer to witness rather than consume. Instead of resorting to emotional clichés and conventional eroticized depictions of the female nude, it presents the mother's body in all its complexity- powerful and nurturing, vulnerable yet unapologetic.

While Opie reframes the maternal body through self-representation, Lalla Essaydi complicates the politics of female identity within a specific cultural and historical context. In Les Femmes du Maroc, Essaydi reappropriates Orientalist traditions that have long exoticized and objectified Middle Eastern and North African women in Western art. The women are enveloped in intricate henna calligraphy—an art form historically practiced by women but often denied recognition as a legitimate form of expression. (Brown) By overlaying their bodies and surroundings with this text, Essaydi reclaims both the visual language and the physical space of the harem, a means through which the women metaphorically write themselves into existence. She constructs a counter-narrative, one that brings the female voice into a context where it has historically been silenced.

If Lalla Essaydi’s figures reclaim the intimate and the ornamental, Paula Rego’s Dog Woman dismantles the feminine ideal altogether. Rendered in oil pastel with a visceral intensity, Rego’s subject crouches low to the ground, limbs bent in a contorted, primal pose. She is both human and animal- neither soft nor submissive, but brimming with an unsettling, ferocious power. This figure does not perform beauty, nor does she seek the viewer’s approval. Instead, Rego taps into a deeper, more complex spectrum of female identity- one that includes rage, wildness, and discomfort. (Oliveira)

These representations are not bound by the constraints of beauty, decorum, or legibility to the patriarchy. Whether it’s unflinching realism, glittering defiance, or feral femininity, these portraits insist on the right to take up space, physically, emotionally, and symbolically. They celebrate sisterhood, motherhood, rage, vulnerability, cultural identity, and unapologetic presence.