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There is a stubborn belief that feminist art focuses on the image of the body. Yet, the core of feminist art is conceptual or social practice; art that is designed not just to be looked at but also to be acted upon. Text or language-based art—including what Hélène Cixous called écriture feminine—has been its crucial component as women probe their erasure from historical texts, their objectification in law, their experience of speaking a second language as racialized and sexualized subjects, and the male-centrism of language, including AI and the internet. The session will provide the analysis of women’s investigation of language as a tool and locus of their cultural oppression, erasure, and as the signifier and sign of their particular cultural experience.

The session seeks to fill a gap in literature about feminist art focused on language by calling for presentations that privilege transnational connections and multigenerational and intersectional comparisons. It invites scholarly feminist analyses of visual poetry by artists of color, art engaging indigenous oral traditions and spoken poetry, or arising from calligraphy, especially from Africa, Asia, Middle East, and the Caribbean.