Paper short abstract:

By using their bodies to create works of art, female artists present themselves as vulnerable, as depending on their relations with others. They distinguish themselves radically from the modern all-powerful creator, thus challenging both the legal notion of author and of an autonomous legal subject.

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from my PhD dissertation on law and body art. As a legal scholar, I examined the way bodies used in contemporary art performances challenged legal rules and categories.

Body art as a medium of expression has been, since its apparition in the 1960s, specifically used by female artists, either as a way to directly express political (feminist) claims or, indirectly, as a mean to explore their position as female creative subjects. By using their bodies to create works of art, these women present themselves as vulnerable, as depending on the relationship they hold with others (and here specifically with the audience) in their creative process and sometimes literally for their lives – since body art often entails extreme actions that can put the performer in real physical danger.

By doing so, they relinquish power and distinguish themselves radically from the modern all-powerful (and disembodied) artist of the preceding decades. They also challenge the legal notion of author (as defined in copyright law) and, consequently, question the idea of an autonomous subject upon which our modern legal systems are built. These practices thus allow us to rethink the legal subject critically, to better encompass the complexity of our embodied, vulnerable selves.