Intersectional Selves: Feminist Self–portraiture
Introducing the issue, Orcutt and Woolley highlight that feminist self-representation is always an inquiry into evolving intersectional experiences.
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Welcome to MAI 15: Intersectional Selves: Feminist Self-Portraiture
Dearest MAI Readers,
Welcome to our Focus Issue 15, dedicated to Feminist Self-Portraiture. Our guest editors, Elizabeth Orcutt and Dawn Woolley, have done an exceptional job in curating this collection of themed texts. Its contents need little extra introduction from us, so eloquent is what is written by Lizzy and Dawn themselves. Their Intro elegantly sums up how the included articles demonstrate that women’s self-portraiture in visual media is always personal, performative, and intensely political.
In this issue, you will also find a rumination on the dynamics of power in the photography of conflict, reports on two successive Berlin Film Festivals, coverage of feminist voices in Slovenian cinema, poetry focusing on gender categorisations, and a bumper crop of book reviews. We believe this is a significant issue, and we are incredibly proud of it. We hand it to you with the hope that these texts will not only give you some food for feminist thought, but that you will also share them with your friends, colleagues, students and peers.
As much as we would love to always be the supporters of great talent and bearers of good news, sometimes life takes its own turn.
Our MAI community lost one of our own this year. Isabelle McNeill passed away this February 21st, leaving many of us not only heartbroken for her and her family, but also with a profound sense of disbelief. We have been pondering the best way to pay tribute to Isabelle, and a proper remembrance will be forthcoming, but we feel sure the entire community will join us in mourning her loss. Her achievements and contributions to MAI speak for themselves, but most of all, she was one of us: a friend, colleague, and feminist comrade. We are all far poorer for her loss.
In remembrance, love, and hope,
Houman Sadri and Anna Misiak
(Gothenburg, Sweden & Falmouth, UK)
Sexual Trauma & Feminist Self-Portraiture in Sex Education
Moore argues that Sex Education is a young adult text revealing the power of feminist self-portraiture to disrupt ableism and rape culture.
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Disorderly Bodies: Self-portraiture as Emancipation for Japanese Women
Exploring Japanese women’s photography, Cavazzuti argues that the use of self-portraiture reveals a shared need to make a political statement.
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#insertingherselfinarthistory: Alison Lloyd’s Feminist Auto-Citation & Social Media
Examining Lloyd’s reframing of her photographs in the new context of social media, Ruocco discusses her practice as feminist auto-citation.
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A Labour of Love: Krishna Istha on M:otherhood Project
Having completed First Trimester, his first film in a planned trilogy, Istha meets Oriana Fox to discuss trans pregnancy and parenthood.
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Self-portrait as Collective Art Praxis: The Jina Uprising in Iran
Esmaeilzade analyses the self-expressive art of the Jina uprising as a significant tool for protesting the systemic oppression of Iranian women.
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No Innocent Bystanders: Nando Messias & Cassils Confront Hate Crimes
Comparing two performance artists, Fox reflects on the complex dynamic of resistance vs. vulnerability in the face of hate crimes.
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Death and Rebirth: 3D Printed Women Portraits by Sophie Kahn
Li examines how Sophie Kahn’s use of transformative materials and glitch aesthetics reshapes contemporary women’s self-portraiture.
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Domestic Scientist & Artist: Bobby Baker’s Portrayals of Feminist Selfhood
The iconic Bobby Baker discusses her radical journey, beginning from a challenging position in the male-dominated art landscape in the UK.
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Maïwenn’s Fragmented Self: Unveiling the Author
Addressing the criticism of Maïwenn and her work, Tataroglu conducts a feminist and post-colonial examination of her directorial output.
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Making the Feminist Intersectional Self Through Erotic Instagram Art
Analysing two artists, Hana Shafi and Theo Grimes, Willcox explores the role of intersectionality in feminist art on Instagram.
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Reconstructive Metadata: A Self-Portrait of the Feminist Reader
In the word obsessed with data profiling, O’Connor creates a metadata catalogue of her feminist readings to develop a radical self-portrait.
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Our Queer-Selves: Design Practice as Self-Portrayal & Collective Expression
Bottomley examines participatory design in queer football communities as a form of collective self-portraiture and resistance.
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‘I Am Once Again Refracting’: Toward a Feminist Psychogeography
Sharing a few poems, Bazil presents herself as an archivist of psychogeography, a witness to moments achingly tender and prismatic.
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Women Photographers: Expanding Agenda & Subverting Powers
The author ponders how the intertwining of gender and race reconfigures the dynamics of power in the photographic coverage of conflict.
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Urška Djukić & Women Voices in Slovenian Cinema
Ana Šturm, from the Slovenian journal, Ekran, meets the award-winning director, Urška Djukić, to discuss her latest film, Little Trouble Girls (2025).
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Stupid as You Say: A Poem
Anand offers a meditative, dialogic reflection on two opposing sensibilities that have often been aligned with binary gender categorisations.
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Sustaining Heterotopic Spaces & Screens: The 74th Berlin Film Festival
The authors offer a feminist reading of the 2024 Berlinale, situating their review against the bigger picture of global politics.
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Navigating a World in Turmoil: The 75th Berlin Film Festival
Reporting from the 2025 Berlinale the authors highlight an increase in films featuring women, nonbinary, and queer-identifying protagonists.
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The Pleasure of Talking about Bad Sex
In this appraisal of Bad Sex: Sexuality, Gender and Affect in Contemporary TV, Mosch commends the authors’ articulation of the sexual in the political context.
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Why Comedies about Pregnancy Matter
Claiming that pregnancy comedies resonate with the political positioning of women, van Raalte concurs with Sturtevant’s conclusions.
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Contextualising the Black Mother
Left hungry for more, Robotham Capernter applauds Black Matrilineage (2022) for its sensitive and creative, if not groundbreaking, presentation of black mothers and their cultural contexts.
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WHO SUPPORTS US
The team of MAI supporters and contributors is always expanding. We’re honoured to have a specialist collective of editors, whose enthusiasm & talent gave birth to MAI.
However, to turn our MAI dream into reality, we also relied on assistance from high-quality experts in web design, development and photography. Here we’d like to acknowledge their hard work and commitment to the feminist cause. Our feminist ‘thank you’ goes to:
Dots+Circles – a digital agency determined to make a difference, who’ve designed and built our MAI website. Their continuous support became a digital catalyst to our idealistic project.
Guy Martin – an award-winning and widely published British photographer who’s kindly agreed to share his images with our readers
Chandler Jernigan – a talented young American photographer whose portraits hugely enriched the visuals of MAI website
Matt Gillespie – a gifted professional British photographer who with no hesitation gave us permission to use some of his work
Julia Carbonell – an emerging Spanish photographer whose sharp outlook at contemporary women grasped our feminist attention
Ana Pedreira – a self-taught Portuguese photographer whose imagery from women protests beams with feminist aura
And other photographers whose images have been reproduced here: Cezanne Ali, Les Anderson, Mike Wilson, Annie Spratt, Cristian Newman, Peter Hershey