Table Of ContentTRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS AND
ART’S TRANSHEMISPHERIC HISTORIES
In this second book of her trailblazing trilogy, Marsha Meskimmon proposes that
decolonial, ecocritical, feminist art’s histories can unravel the anthropocentric leg-
acies of Eurocentric universalism, to create transformative conversations between
and across many and more-than-human worlds.
Engaging with the ecologies and genealogies – worlds and stories – that consti-
tute the plural knowledge projects of transnational feminisms and art’s transhem-
ispheric histories, the book is written through two critical figurations: transcanons
and trans-scalar ecologies. Materializing art’s histories as radical practices of discipli-
nary disobedience, the volume demonstrates how planetary feminisms can foster
interdependent flourishing as they story pluriversal worlds, and world pluriversal
stories, with art.
This is essential reading for students and researchers in art history, theory and
practice, visual culture studies, feminism and gender studies, environmental human-
ities and cultural geography.
The Trilogy:
Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections
Transnational Feminisms and Art’s Transhemispheric Histories: Ecologies and Genealogies
Transnational Feminisms and Posthuman Aesthetics: Resonance and Riffing
Marsha Meskimmon is Professor of Transnational Art and Feminisms, and
Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Loughborough University (UK).
Her publications include Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art:
Entanglements and Intersections (2020), Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan
Imagination (2010), Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics (2003), all with
Routledge.
TRANSNATIONAL
FEMINISMS AND ART’S
TRANSHEMISPHERIC
HISTORIES
Ecologies and Genealogies
Marsha Meskimmon
Cover image: Boxed plinth with graffiti following Rhodes Must Fall
demonstrations, University of Cape Town, South Africa, August 2015.
Image courtesy of the author
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Marsha Meskimmon
The right of Marsha Meskimmon to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-138-57975-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-57976-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-50781-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429507816
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
CONTENTS
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
PART I
Storying Pluriversal Worlds 17
1 Transcanons: Transhemispheric Stories for Pluriversal Worlds 19
PART II
Practice and Flourish 63
2 Poetic Stories: Genealogies of Work and Survival with Audre Lorde 65
3 Pedagogical Worlds: Expansive Ecologies of Connection and Care 86
PART III
Worlding Pluriversal Stories 109
4 Trans-Scalar Ecologies: Worlding Planetary Feminist Stories with Art 111
Afterword: On Trilogics 148
Selected Bibliography 150
Index 162
FIGURES
1.1 Phil Sayers and Rikke Lundgreen, installation view,
Changing Places, Liverpool, Lady Lever Art Gallery, 2007–08.
Image courtesy of the artists 25
1.2 Statuette of Standing Hermaphrodite, 70–100 AD.
Image courtesy of National Museums Liverpool 26
1.3 Frederick Leighton, The Bath of Psyche, 1890.
Image courtesy of Tate Gallery, London 27
1.4 Phil Sayers, On Reflection, 2007.
Image courtesy of the artist 29
1.5 Phil Sayers, Captivated, 2007.
Image courtesy of the artist 34
1.6 Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique designed by Jean-Gabriel Charvet
for the firm of Joseph Dufour et Cie, c.1805.
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 36
1.7 Lisa Reihana, In Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015–17. Ultra HD
video, colour, 7.1 sound, 64 min, Auckland Art Gallery. Photo:
Jennifer French.
Image courtesy of the artist 38
1.8 Lisa Reihana, In Pursuit of Venus [infected], detail: Stars, 2015–17.
Ultra HD video, colour, 7.1 sound, 64 min.
Image courtesy of the artist 41
1.9 Lisa Reihana, In Pursuit of Venus [infected], detail: Mourning,
2015–17. Ultra HD video, colour, 7.1 sound, 64 min.
Image courtesy of the artist 42
1.10 Mariana Castillo Deball, Between making and knowing something,
Modern Art Oxford, installation view, 2020. Photographer:
Figures vii
Ben Westoby. Museum case courtesy of the Oxford University
Museum of Natural History.
Image courtesy of the artist and Modern Art Oxford 47
1.11 Mariana Castillo Deball, A_____LL Around I, installation view,
from Between making and knowing something, Modern Art Oxford,
installation view, 2020. Ceramic vessel made of red stoneware
painted with engobe slip. Hand-woven textile dyed with an ikat
pattern and displayed with backstrap looms produced in the state of
Michoacán, Mexico by Ukata. Ceramics produced with the assis-
tance of ceramicist Silvia Andrande. Photographer: Ben Westoby.
Image courtesy of the artist and Modern Art Oxford 49
1.12 Mariana Castillo Deball, Between making and knowing something,
Modern Art Oxford, installation view, 2020. Photographer:
Ben Westoby. Museum case courtesy of the Oxford University
Museum of Natural History. Elsie McDougall fieldwork
photography, parts of wooden backstrap looms. Fieldwork photo-
graphs courtesy of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
Image courtesy of the artist, Modern Art Oxford and Pitt Rivers
Museum, University of Oxford 53
2.1 Lana Lin, still from The Cancer Journals Revisited, 2018. 79
3.1 Lala Rukh, Mirror Image: 1, 1997. Mixed media on graph paper,
48 × 60 cm. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York (2019.260a–c).
Image courtesy of the Estate of Lala Rukh and Grey Noise Dubai 92
3.2 Lala Rukh, River in an ocean: 6, 1993. Mixed media on
photographic paper 24.8 × 20.9 cm.
Image courtesy of the Estate of Lala Rukh and Grey Noise, Dubai 93
3.3 Boxed plinth with graffiti following Rhodes Must Fall demonstrations,
University of Cape Town, South Africa, August 2015.
Image courtesy of the author 98
3.4 Graffiti shadow of Rhodes at the base of the covered plinth
following Rhodes Must Fall demonstrations, University of Cape
Town, South Africa, August 2015.
Image courtesy of the author 98
4.1 Wu Mali, Breakfast event with local residents (2010), from Art as
Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek, 2010–12.
Image courtesy of the artist and Bamboo Curtain Studio, New
Taipei City 119
4.2 Judith F. Baca, copyright 1983. Detail ‘Mrs Laws’ to ‘Louisa
Moreno’, several panels from the 1940s section of the Great Wall
of Los Angeles mural.
Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives SPARCinLA.org 122
viii Figures
4.3 Wu Mali, Shaping the village, Art as Environment: A Cultural
Action at the Plum Tree Creek, 2010–12.
Image courtesy of the artist and Bamboo Curtain Studio,
New Taipei City 124
4.4 Judith F. Baca, copyright 1983. Detail ‘Chinese Build the
Railway’ to ‘Chinese Massacre, 1871’, several panels from the first
1000 ft. section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural.
Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives SPARCinLA.org 131
4.5 Wu Mali, Walk along the Plum Tree Creek, Art as Environment:
A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek, 2010–12.
Image courtesy of the artist and Bamboo Curtain Studio,
New Taipei City 136
4.6 Judith F. Baca, copyright 1983. Detail ‘Jewish Arts and Sciences’
to ‘Indian Assimilation’, several panels from the 1950s section of
the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural.
Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives SPARCinLA.org 137
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume would not have been completed without the generous engagement of
a number of colleagues, friends and family, not to mention the support of a range
of institutions. It is a pleasure to thank them here for their care and attention – two
terms that have come to be more fully appreciated over the past few years, as the
ethico-political acts that they are.
The arguments in this book unfold as conversations with artworks and I owe a
huge debt of gratitude to the artists who have granted permission to reproduce their
work across its pages, not to mention the many who engaged with early versions
of the chapters, bringing insights and nuances to the conversations that only they
could offer. The book is better for this generous dialogue. My thanks, in particular
to Phil Sayers and Rikke Lundgreen, Lisa Reihana, Mariana Castillo Deball, Lana
Lin, Wu Mali and Judith Baca. In addition, I was extended exceptional courtesy
and assistance from individuals working with the artists and in institutions hold-
ing their estate, or in key collections, and I would like to recognize this, as it was
crucial to the realization of the volume. My thanks to Nathan Pendlebury, Keith
Sweeney and Heather McCabe at National Museums Liverpool; Chris Sutherns
at Tate Images; Madison Du at the National Gallery of Australia; James Pinker at
artprojects, Auckland; Amy Budd and Jessie Robertson at Modern Art Oxford;
Remko at Studio Castillo Deball in Berlin; Mark Dickerson at the Pitt Rivers
Museum, University of Oxford; Elaine Lubguban at Grey Noise Gallery, Dubai;
Cristina D’Alessandro at Scala Archives, Florence; Svea Josephy at the Michaelis
School of Art, University of Cape Town; Bamboo Curtain Studio in New Taipei
City, and Pilar Castillo at the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in
Venice, California.
Dialogues with trusted friends and colleagues, many having to be contin-
ued at long distance and digitally for the past few years, underpin this volume.
Loughborough University is a good home for my thinking and, in particular, my
