The Untamed Self-portrait: Rewilding the female image

This practice-led research project is about the freedom to be ‘monstrous’ or obscene, to extend oneself beyond the boundaries of patriarchy so that new languages and narratives can be created and sustained. It seeks to unpack how women’s self-image is influenced by the patriarchal gaze and to explore ways of inspiring new narratives outside the boundaries of patriarchal tradition through self-portraiture and collage as well as creative workshops. The aim is to question and challenge the ways in which women’s images and identities have been shaped and controlled by patriarchal conventions and to explore how the female image can be ‘rewilded’ outside the current patriarchal context through deconstruction and recreation. The project has a gentle activist approach and contributes to the growing body of artistic and academic work that questions and challenges traditional representations of women.

Henrica Langh is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher inspired by the magic of the ordinary and our delicate existence in this world. Her practice is highly process-led and serendipitous, and she works across different subject areas and mediums, such as textiles, photography, poetry, and installation art. Rather than being solidified in finished outcomes, her practice forms an ongoing dialogue between ideas, feelings, and material experiments that grow and interweave like a garden. Her research interests lie in material culture and emotion, feminist approaches to body and identity, phenomenology in its original sense, and practice-as-research. She holds an MA in Applied Imagination from Central Saint Martins and a PhD in practice-led research from the University for the Creative Arts.

Visit Henrica’s website here
@henrica.langh