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Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure

Eisen, Michelle Connory
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1714828117687262

Abstract Details

2024, MFA, Kent State University, College of the Arts / School of Art.
“Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure” explores the relationship between the abjection associated with the feminine figure and queer discourses surrounding sexual expression and gender dynamics. Julia Kristeva, in her 1980 work “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection”, examines the social and cultural disruptions caused by objects/subjects on the boundaries of “The Symbolic Order”. Kristeva’s work, along with the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, lend themselves to the development of a perspective on queer bodies that allow them to revel in the abjection imposed on them. The transfeminine figure is regarded as a taboo, an infringement on the boundaries of both social order and biological determinism. It is in this that “Soft Machines” weaponizes abjection to illustrate expressions of queer love and desire that align themselves with femme perspectives, an act of resistance against the centering of masculine accounts of queer sexual expression. “Soft Machines” situates itself as a feminist body of work exploring the boundaries of printmaking, painting, and sculpture using watercolor silkscreen monotype on canvas and installation. “Soft Machines” explores a corporeal color palette reminiscent of skin and the bodily interior. The “figures” printed on the canvas works are ambiguously internal and external, twisting and folding over each other across the print/paintings. My research into the relationship between painting and printmaking inform these aesthetic and formal decisions, “queering” the traditional formats of both by producing works that could be read by viewers in either context. The main painting device throughout this work is specifically watercolor, chosen for its historical relationship to women in the arts as well as its ability to stain textiles with minimal material disruption. The balancing of softness and the visceral is central to this work and is reflective of my research interests in queer feminism.
Taryn McMahon (Advisor)
Shawn Powell (Committee Chair)
John Paul Morabito (Committee Chair)
Eli Kessler (Committee Chair)
33 p.
Fine Arts
printmaking; print; painting; stain painting; abstract expressionism; post-figurative abstraction; post-gendered bodies; gender; queerness; queer; transfeminine; transgender

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Eisen, M. C. (2024). Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1714828117687262

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Eisen, Michelle. Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure. 2024. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1714828117687262.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Eisen, Michelle. "Soft Machines: Abject Bodies, Queer Sexual Expression, and the Deterritorialized Transfeminine Figure." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1714828117687262

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1714828117687262
39
© 2024, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.