Breasts, Bodies, Art: Central Desert Women’s Paintings and the Politics of the Aesthetic Encounter

Main Article Content

Jennifer L Biddle

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a culturally distinctive relationship between breasts and contemporary art from Central Desert Aboriginal women. Contra to the dominant interpretation of these paintings as representations of ‘country’—cartographic ‘maps’ of the landscape, narratives of Dreaming Ancestors, flora, fauna, species—my argument is that these works bespeak a particular breasted experience and expression, a cultural way of doing and being in the world; what I want to call a breasted ontology.

Article Details

Section
Indigenous Art (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biography

Jennifer L Biddle, Macquarie University

JENNIFER L BIDDLE is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University. Her book The Imperative to Feel: Aboriginal Art as Experience is forthcoming from UNSW Press. She conducts research with Warlpiri women in Lajamanu and, with Robyn Ferrell, on the relationship between feminist aesthetics and Indigenous art.