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Imperceptibility as Feminist Epistemology in the Work of Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta and Francesca Woodman

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Abstract

Imperceptibility is not a lack but a feminist way of knowing. Focusing on works by three women artists – Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta, and Francesca Woodman – produced amid the long 1970s, this essay shows how thresholds, traces, and blur redirect attention from what artworks display to how they withhold and delay legibility. Centring artist‑material intra-action, it interrogates visibility-as-truth, the ‘neutral’ medium, the disembodied observer, and the premise of self-representation as self-restoration. It politicises attention, reframes absence as a mode of presence, and relocates evidence to process, relation, and duration. The essay moves beyond visibility-as-remedy towards conditions of appearance, withholding, and resonance.


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Submitted: Oct. 15, 2025 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Feminist epistemology • Absence • Situated knowledges • Material-discursive practice • Intra-action • Imperceptibility

Copyright © 2025 Lee Sze Man Sarotta. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


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