Asparkía. Investigació feminista
Feminist Deconstruction and Reappropriation of Space in Art

Editors: Andrea Luquin Calvo (Universidad Internacional de Valencia, VIU), Alberto Ferrer García (Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, UOC) and Anna Vives (University of Edinburgh)

Period to send articles and reviews: from 1 October 2022 until 31 January 2023.

Publication of issue: December 2023.

Languages: Spanish, English, Catalan.

Instructions for authors: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/index.php/asparkia/index

Further information on the issue: andrea.luquincampusviu.es, aferrergarcia0uoc.edu, anna.vivesed.ac.uk

E-mail address: mguiraluji.es

Book reviews: To participate in this monographic issue, authors can also send reviews of books published in 2021, 2022 and 2023 that related to the interests of the journal.

Asparkía. Investigació feminista is a biannual journal published in June and December. Publication is subject to double-blind peer review by the Purificación Escribano University Research Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies of the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló (Spain). Asparkía intends to attract a wide range of top quality scientific articles by national and international researchers from the gender and feminist theory field. The journal is indexed in: SCOPUS, DOAJ, CARHUS Plus+ 2014, ERIHPlus, MIAR, The ISOC database, Latindex, Dialnet, Dulcinea, REDIB, DICE, RESH, IN-RECS, CIRC and Ulrichsweb.

Call for papers: The reflection on the meaning and construction of space as the place where our actions develop and the meanings of discourse are formed (comprising the socio-political order but also memory, identity and gender) has always been one of the central points of feminist exploration.

This monographic issue aims to put together research pieces dealing with the reflection, deconstruction, resignification and reappropriation of space as manifested in the artistic works by a series of women creators. The deconstruction and exploration of the meaning of space by these women creators becomes the focus of new meanings that, in turn, lead to the reappropriation and transformation of those spaces. Through the employment of a variety of artistic languages, as a form of creation of new discourses and as new realities, the works created also work as a mechanism to destabilize hegemonic narratives.

In this context, this monograph pays special attention to the articulation of memory, the political, identity and gender in the space of art and visual culture from the epistemological and methodological framework pertaining to feminism. This articulation is a key form of expression from the perspective of the revalorization of women’s production and of those discourses that have not been included in the historical canon of patriarchal societies. The focus is on identifying the construction of counter-hegemonic spaces by a series of women creators, which allow for the configuration of new political and social scenarios in the artistic space. These artistic spaces indicate the necessary representation and recognition of those discourses as constructions that act as the starting point or the moment of destabilization and subversion of socio-political and identity spaces.

Beyond recovering the work of a series of women creators –a question that remains inconclusive and that this monographic issue also wants to consider- the intention is to pinpoint the different aspects of the contemporary artistic discourse of women creators that experiment similarly with the meanings of space in their works.

The aim of the issue is to achieve the recognition and representation of the artistic constructions by women within the public sphere. It also aims to achieve the revalorization of art as a form of production of thought that allows to experience, imagine and think other spaces and times, making space for new proposals of construction of memory, identity and gender, including political and social proposals, in search of the configuration of a more encompassing common space as needed in our societies.

Possible topics for this monographic issue are as follows:

1. Deconstruction and reappropriation of identity: this applies to works and discourses by women creators that deconstruct and contest gender identity and roles, by presenting the reappropriated self from new narrative and expressive perspectives that allow the transformation of one’s identity and the spatial interactions with others.

2. Deconstruction and reappropriation of the private space: this refers to the space in which women have been traditionally placed, a space related to domesticity, the ' identical space''. This is also a space of exclusion from the public space (hospital, prison) as a punishment. These spaces are under scrutiny and are also contested and transformed or serve as metaphors of new perspectives on identity and the socio-political in art.

3. Deconstruction and reappropriation of the public space: women have been present in different public spaces showing positions, ideologies, thoughts and actions that make of them social and political agents. Through their art, they have strived for political participation, understanding the public space as a place for presence and recognition. This public space has also been an object of deconstruction in its political forms of organization, recognition, representation and distribution.

4. Deconstruction and reappropriation of memory: memory on past time and spaces has an impact on the understanding of the socio-political space and on the construction of the own identity. The discourses and works that look for a reappropriation or deconstruction of one’s history or the communal history function as new narratives for understanding identity and political spaces, as a memory that contests hegemony that implies a different relation with those events from which it originates.

5. Deconstruction and reappropriation of spaces in art: recognition in the history of art and visual culture as well as in contemporary art of the invisibilized work by women: these works strive to deconstruct languages and artistic spaces in order to generate proposals of their own that contest the canon. These are educational or cultural proposals that want to recognize the artistic work by women, allowing them representativity and visibility in the public sphere.

6. Reappropriation of space by art itself. Spaces of recognition: The use of one’s art to fight for women’s presence, action and discourse in the space, where art becomes a tool that allows visibility to women’s action. Through artistic productions and interventions that contest the canon, the work by a series of women creators looks for the public recognition of events, forgotten people or the deconstruction of historical facts in order to imbue them with a gender perspective.