Conceptual Threads explores the intersection of textile craft and conceptual art. Sewing, embroidery, and other textile works have long been treated as a craft rather than art, deserving of the same respect as painting or sculpture. Scholars starting in the late 20th century began to question whether this was due to the fact that textiles had often been associated with women, and was considered a leisure activity rather than a viable career. During this same time, the conceptualism movement was forming. Conceptualism focused around the intellectual concept behind art pieces, rather than their execution. Conceptual Threads focuses on the intersection between these two scholastic movements, and what artists can create when they're not confined to traditional media. I will be conducting my research mainly through written histories of the period, however I also plan to recreate several conceptual works that combine textiles with performance. I will also ask participants in my symposium to attempt a simple textile craft in order to gain hands-on experience with the topic.

In the early 1990s as, feminist photography was gaining traction in contemporary Japan, young artists such as Rinko Kawauchi and Hiromix were emerging. As female photographers, their work was being labeled as, “onnanoko shashin,” or rather, “girl photography.” Twenty-year-old Yurie Nagashima had just returned from America and was completely astounded by this term; surprised to find out it had actually become a real photographic genre at all. Nagashima began to dominate the field (despite her dislike for the term) with her unique approach to photography.While her photographs vary in subject matter, themes of sexuality, body-image, and familial bonds remain consistent in her work. Her perspective as a woman allows her to capture emotions and experiences felt by not only her, but by all women thus allowing the viewer to reflect and recognize themselves in her pictures. Through self-portraiture, family portraiture, and photographic representation of the trials and tribulations of everyday life, Nagashima challenges the male gaze, and encapsulates the ever-changing roles that come with the experience of womanhood. A thorough visual analysis of her work will make clear the greater implications her photographs have on understanding the female experience, from a first-person perspective. Nagashima’s work is vital for not only “onnanoko shashin,” and contemporary Japanese art, but contemporary art internationally. Her personal connection to her work is vital to not only create meaning but to unite women in their shared experiences globally.

The Japanese animated film Kimi no Na wa (Your Name), directed by Makoto Shinkai, premiered in 2016 and quickly became positively revered and awarded as the second-highest-grossing anime film at the time of its release. The movie contains romantic and fantastical elements to tell the story of Mitsuha Miyamizu, a girl from the rural countryside, and Taki Tachibana, a boy from Tokyo, who somehow begin to swap bodies with each other and attempt to meet in person. However, things get more complicated when they discover Mitsuha is three years in the past, just before a natural disaster strikes her town. This study aims to understand how Kimi no Na wa expresses modern Japanese identity. This investigation will contain an analysis of the Kimi no Na wa's visual and narrative elements, including framing, lighting, color, score, and iconography, and their relation to Japanese culture as depicted in the film. The characters Mitsuha and Taki will act as case studies to showcase identity and allow us to focus on specific facets of Japanese society. These facets comprise of gender, Japanese historical traditions, geographical differences within Japan, and the effects of disaster on Japanese culture. The findings of this research will help us understand modern Japanese identity as a whole and how it appears in film. This study offers a platform for discourse on portrayals of identity in film as well as an understanding of modern Japanese identity as it is portrayed in film, with an emphasis on views on gender identity in Japan, historical traditions, regional differences within Japan, and how living in a disaster-prone area affects Japanese society.

Mirrors have been a contextually important part of architecture and painting since before the Renaissance, but during the Baroque and leading into the Rococo, mirrors became a central aspect to power dynamics in built environments and were utilized as a tool to control self-representations. This paper investigates the ways in which mirrors were activated in interior architecture and paintings, as well as how they underscored the “soft” power of elite women during the Rococo period by analyzing François Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour (1756) as an example of mirrors and expressions of the self and purposeful manifestations of “soft” power. I place Boucher’s painting in the context of contemporary interior spaces, such as the Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors (1678) which illustrates “hard” political power and the Salon de la Princesse room in Paris’ Hôtel de Soubise (1732) which communicates a softer power, as examples to how mirrors enforce performative power in spaces. I explain how power dynamics are reinforced through interior spaces paying special attention to use of space, decoration/motifs, and the location/orientation of the interior architecture and design and exploring Madame de Pompadour’s use of mirrors to subtly control a narrative that elevated her status in the French court.
The implications of this work recontextualize the presence of mirrors in paintings of the Rococo period and give a new view on the roots of the subtly psychological implications of mirrors within the built environment. Mirrors as a topic of specific study within aristocratic interiors lacks robust research, my work aims to fill part of this gap by seeking to understand how mirrors established themselves within architecture through power preformances and psychology.

During the period following the First World War, the Weimar Government arose just as the emancipation of German women began. “The New Woman,” as she was termed, demonstrated liberation and modernity: she voted, worked for a wage, was fashionable, and had fewer children. Dada artist Hannah Höch produced a myriad of works that celebrated the New Woman, especially as she worked in an artist group dominated by men. However, in her collage, Da-Dandy (1919), Höch seemingly critiques this concept, specifically narrowing in on the bourgeois co-option of women’s newfound freedom. Da-Dandy was decidedly not working class; instead, she sported pearl necklaces, high heels, bob haircuts, and fancy dresses, all while being spared from class politics and struggles. In many ways, Da-Dandy is the demonstration and continuation of bourgeois power. This paper first addresses how upper-class women claimed movements and concepts not necessarily meant for them, particularly “The New Woman.” Höch, while known for her critique of the male gaze, focuses on a ‘female gaze’ through a class-derived analysis of the female form in Da-Dandy. Therefore, the paper articulates how her fragmented, deformed, and collaged image centers on the appropriation of the New Woman by the bourgeoisie milieu to call out a new form of fetishization of women.

Ford Madox Brown's 1865 painting Work depicts a group of laborers digging a sewage line on a busy London street. Widely considered the most important painting of Ford Madox Brown’s career, Work is also one of the most radical paintings of the pre-Raphaelite period. In this presentation, I will argue that the dignity afforded to manual laborers in Work establishes a pride in British identity and a push for social reform in line with Christian socialist values. I will support this argument by analyzing the painting's composition, use of symbolism, and historical context. In the painting’s composition and content, the work of William Hogarth and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood reveal themselves as influences on Brown’s art and politics. I will also discuss how other scholars have interpreted Work’s symbolism and sociopolitical context, especially the writings of John A. Walker and Jenny Plastow. Through the painting and Brown’s accompanying catalog, Work instructs the importance of education and Christian values to social reform. Work is a complex and historically significant painting that celebrates labor during a turbulent time in England’s history. This paper will strengthen understanding of Work’s political rhetoric and symbolism, and in doing so illuminate the context of its creation.

In 1937, the small Spanish town, Guernica, was bombed by a German air unit during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing gained little notoriety until artist Pablo Picasso created Guernica–a painting that vividly captured the horror and devastation of the incident. The work is composed of a multitude of symbols; however, Picasso never offered a designated meaning, leaving viewers with years of speculation. Therefore, in order to situate the importance of the painting to the Spanish audience, as well as to later contemporary audiences, the paper analyzes the various signs and symbols peppered in the work to navigate the artistic, social, and political circumstances under which Guernica was painted. The socio-political climate of Spain during the time and the fractured alliances and conflicts that provoked the Civil War played a pertinent role. The paper considers how the painting acts as part of the archive, serving as both a historical record and an initiator of political discourse to confront the devastation of war. Such a methodology nuances the motives and views at the time. For example, reoccurring motifs, such as the bull and the horse, take on new resonance in the image, just as other fractured symbols in the work, such as the sun and the broken sword, provide further contextualization and would go on to impact the larger reception of the violent image.