Performances of situated knowledge in the ageing female body

Abstract

Kathleen Woodward describes how the ageing female body is both hyper-visible and invisible: mass media representations tend to regulate expectations for how women are to behave as they age while rendering them obsolete and erasing them from view. The artists under consideration in this chapter—Rocio Boliver, Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti, and Marilyn Arsem—reveal the relationship between gender and age in a non-traditional manner. Despite the differences between these artists in how they approach ageing, their practices are united in that experiences of ageing are treated as performative through the creation of live works that emerge from embodied experiences.