Painting beyond death: a paradigm for the critical posthuman subject in a feminist framework : an exploration of non-self

Abstract

Painting Beyond Death: a Paradigm for the Critical Posthuman Subject in a Feminist Framework considers contemporary painting in its post-medium condition as a paradigm for a critical posthuman subjectivity. Emerging from within contemporary feminism, Critical Posthumanism may be characterised in part by its radically nonanthropocentric worldview.

While the central axis of this feminist inquiry pivots upon the supposition that painting as a site of material encounter maintains a privileged relation to the condition of the subject, it also builds upon the idea that the agential capacity of painting has the potential not only to de-centre but also defamiliarize individual, subjective experience.

My research posits painting and the subject as a dynamical system in which both painting and the subject are co-determined and continuously regenerated. This concept is tested through my own artistic practice and theoretical inquiry, operating at the intersection of painting, digital printing, surrealist automatism, as well as feminist theory, art criticism and art history. As test subject, I retroactively explore and rethink my creative process from the last decade in its intuitive, material and theoretically informed outlines.

This thesis has a subtitle: ‘An exploration of non-self’; an imperative that seeks to recast the idea of ‘non-being/nothing' as the locus of feminine desire in an affirmative and necessary relationship to material encounter. Revisiting the death of painting discourse, presumed obsolete, I reinvigorate the notion of painting’s expiration through the application of key feminist concepts such as Julia Kristeva’s abject, Lou Andreas-Salomé’s primordial kinship and Mira Schor’s flow. I consider painting as a vehicle for unlocking Rosi Braidotti’s transversal force, zoe, both within my own artistic practice, as well as artistic approaches adopted by contemporary women painters I admire. This research ultimately seeks to address the gap in visual culture of a specifically female, feminine desire that has for the most part remained unarticulated and underexamined.

Date of Award	Jul 2026
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland
Supervisor	Cherie Driver (Supervisor) & Louise Wallace (Supervisor)