Sculpture Journal CFP: Sculpture and the Non-Normative Body.

The normative body has been the traditional subject of sculpture since antiquity. Its ubiquity, however, has led to the invisibility of the diversity of bodies in the history of art: from the disabled body of Aesop and the ‘hermaphrodite’ from antiquity to the ‘grotesque’ or ‘monstrous’ from the Renaissance garden to the polychrome ‘ethnographic’ portrait busts from the nineteenth century. We want to question these categories and address bodies that have been under-represented in sculpture, either through representational strategies, materials that reflect on lived experience, and/or sculptural practice itself.

In the first of a series of recurring themed issues around sculpture and the body, the Editors of the Sculpture Journal encourage abstracts that rethink the traditional methods of sculpture in art history in relation to gender, sexuality, race, class and/or disability. We invite proposals for contributions that stem from but are not limited to the following: fragmentation and decay; queer and trans perspectives; health and disability; processes of othering; materiality; redefinitions/responses to normativity/the normative body; artists engaging in their work via lived experience or through materiality. We are looking at this issue transhistorically and globally, across a range of sculpture practices, from the figurative to the abstract.

We invite abstracts of up to 250 words to be submitted to Teresa Kittler (teresa.kittleryork.ac.uk) and Natasha Ruiz-Gómez (natasharessex.ac.uk) by 1st June 2025. Final submission of full-length articles of 6000-8000 words including endnotes will be requested by 1st September 2025.

Sculpture Journal is the foremost scholarly journal devoted to sculpture in all its aspects across the globe. It provides an international forum for writers and scholars in the wider field of sculpture, including all three-dimensional art and monuments. Published by Liverpool University Press, the journal offers a keen critical overview and a sound historical base, encouraging contributions of fresh research from new and established names in the field.

www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/sj