Somewhere, Anywhere, Elsewhere: Painting Femininity that Wanders and Lingers

Abstract

This practice-led research, Somewhere, Anywhere, Elsewhere: Painting Femininity that Wander and Lingers, explores feminine subjectivity as wandering, unsettled, and resistant to visual containment within painted narratives and material construction. Through image sourcing, collage, drawing, and painting, masculine-coded imagery is reworked by positioning female figures within it, and enacting moments of rest or care. Inspired by cinematic stories, withheld episodic narratives, diptychs and stalled cars are used to suspend narrative progression and disrupt linear storytelling structures that rely on resolution and coherent chronological sequencing. Translucent substrates and exposed stretcher frames further disrupt traditional viewing experiences tied to the male gaze by revealing the painting's material construction and creating a threshold between visibility and obscurity. Through these methods, this project unsettles masculine-coded aesthetics and frameworks by engaging painting as an unstable site where feminine becoming can remain continually in process and unresolved.