Re-Constructing Femininities

Perverting Performance in Hannahlisa Kunyik’s Susanne fotografiert mich beim Bade (2011/2012/2018)

Abstract

“If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture.” Peggy Phelan’s witty quote perfectly sums up the imbalance between in_visibility and (political) agency. One example of being hypervisibly naked while at the same time lacking agency is the subject of Susanna bathing, which, emerging from the Old Testament Bible story Susanna and the Elders, is one of the best-known and most-cited motifs of Western art history. In the intermedial installation Susanne fotografiert mich beim Bade (2011/2012/2018) by Viennese artist Hannahlisa Kunyik, Susanne is the one who sees.

In the following article, I shall analyze Kunyik’s artwork by introducing my concept of perverting performance as a subversive strategy for marginalized subjects to gain visual agency, as well as the possibility of visual re-constructions of femininities. The possibilities of a perverting performance can be understood in the repeated and parodying reversal of existing norms and modes of representation that have proven themselves to be normative through performative repetition in a cultural image repertoire. With the concept of perverting I revisit and reappropriate a term that has been used to produce Otherness and alterized sexuality.