Det gengældte blik

Abstract

This article asks how self-staging and self-exposure are employed as an artistic strategy to negotiate the boundaries between (self-)objectification and liberation. Focusing on the images of Danish artists Maja Malou Lyse and Kirsten Justesen as a dialogue between feminists of two different generations, the article inquires into the function of the staged image as performance across the contexts and infrastructures within which it is actual- ized. The artists’ practices in each their way inspire to reconsider and negotiate the relationship and exchange between the onlooker and looked-at, the posing object and producing subject, as it is expressed in the image. Drawing upon feminist theory, post- pornography, and contemporary image theory, the aim of this article is to investigate how these practices inspire to discuss the boundaries between a critical observing subject and an invested, embodied, and desiring one.