Feminist performance art

The sociologist Rachel V Kutz-Flamenbaum writes about two major players in the anti-war performance art movement during the George W Bush administration. Code Pink, and Raging Grannies challenge and subvert gender norms in their performances, and thus, use very similar tactics and strategies. For instance, in Code Pink, Kutz-Flamenbaum asserts that, "the emphasis on women's role as pacifist caregivers presents a nonthreatening image of women activists."

The perpetuated concept of women as non threatening, relies on the audiences association of pink as a non threatening and feminized colour. Kutz-Flamenbaum argues that "Code Pink’s use of civil disobedience and aggressive trailing of public officials confound and challenge normative gender expectations of women as passive, polite, and well-behaved."(95)[5] Kutz-Flamenbaum claims that Raging Grannies similarly use this tactic in the description of their mission statement. Kutz-Flamenbaum explains that their mission statement "illustrates the way Raging Grannies use norm- embracing stereotypes of "little old ladies" and "grannies" to challenge the gendered assumptions of their audiences." Their conscious performance as non-threatening and nurturing women, strategically and tactfully confront issues related to war and challenge the participation of the George W Bush administration in the war.

Regina José Galindo, a Guatemalan performance artist who specialises in body art. Galindo's female body works focus on two major representations: First, the representation of the "excessive, carnivalized, grotesque and abject female body"; Second, on the "female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level".[8] Galindo use body to explore "female sexuality, notions of feminine beauty, race or domestic and national violence".[9] Editors of "Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform" (2003), has stated Galindo's body art as "politics of representation and the strategies of power written across the female body, which serves as both message and the vehicle".[10] Galindo's body works explore the relationship between "womanhood and patriarchy",[11] as how Russo, M. (1994) has mentioned female body "as a model of normatively, the severe and penetrating moral, social and aesthetic judgement seem to converge upon the female body".[12]

Karen Finley, a female performer who performing nude, by shocking her audiences with violent and sexual abusing stories. Within Finley's performance, she used to stand at the point as "victims of rape, child abuse, AIDS, domestic violence and racism".[13] Finely is using her body and the nudity from her body performance to "speaking for other women who are unable to speak for themselves...".[14] Finely's body as a medium to present as a "site of oppression". Though, the critique towards Finely's nudity performances as "pornographic",[15] Finely believes that a woman body can become a representative for all the bodies of all women who had/have/will be suffered from those oppression.[16]

Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964) is categorised as performance art, a piece where Ono sits in the centre of the stage by herself, wearing a formal suit. Ono's performance invited audience to "cut a small piece" from her suit with a pair of scissors given by Ono.[17] Ono described Cut Piece (1964), at the first time she performed, as "a test of her commitment to life as an artist...", which Ono's Cut Piece (1964) was not first implying the ideology to against violence in gender or presenting the piece with a feminism ideology.[18] Ono performed her work Cut Piece (1964) in Paris, more than 30 years later - For World Peace, in September 2003. Ono has restated her thoughts on Cut Piece (1964) as "against ageism, against racism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence" to the Routers News Agency.[18] In Dolan's article "Make a Spectacle, Make a Difference" (2010), which stated that there are more women initiate into the playwrights and to perform on stage within recent twenty years.[19] During the 1970s, in the US, women started to promote theatre of women, in order to crack down the domination of men in the theatre.[20] There are a rising numbers of women engage into playwright and perform on stage, similarly to Yoko Ono; the stage or the theatre becomes a medium to the women to "express their lives and politics" and to create "collectives".[21] Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964), as a performance which against gender violence, either for men or women,[22] rising the political problematic of gender inequality in theatre, which offers a new way for female to make changes on gender domination within performance art.[23]

Performance art was being a popular medium to express and to respond to the political unrest and the changing culture, since the late 1960s to '70s. Performance art has free the body, which allows the body being implied "sexual liberation and resistance to cultural constraints".[24] Considering feminist performance, the "object of gaze" and an "object of desire" are the biggest concern in the theatre.[25] Connected with Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964), the "real gaze" from the male audience may not be seen through the third perspective, yet we can perceive their actions by seeing male audiences cutting off pieces of fabric from Ono's suit. There has been various discussionby scholars of feminism studies about the "male gaze" on female performances or theatres. Sue-Ellen Case, author of Feminism and Theatre (1988), has suggested that the image of female performers would have been projected as "courtesan" by the desire from male audience.[26] Case here means that the desire of male audience, has motivate themselves to "look" at the female performers as a "sexual object".[27] Besides, Laura Mulvey, who suggested that under the male gaze, woman has become a "passive object".[28] Other then that, Hov, Live, author of "The First Female Performers: Tumblers, Girls, and Mime Actresses", who suggested that "male-gaze" violence is a matter which "considered as universal" of all "theatre and performance", as long as "real women participate in the actions presented for the audience".[29]