Imperceptibility as Feminist Epistemology in the Work of Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta and Francesca Woodman
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.
Submitted: Oct. 15, 2025 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords Material-discursive practice • Situated knowledges • Feminist epistemology • Intra-action • Absence • Imperceptibility
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