All those nasty womanly things: Women artists,technology and the monstrous-feminine

In the context of international women's studies, contemporary women's art theory and practice remain somewhat on the margins. Yet the issues raised in the work of women practitioners are of crucial importance to current debates surrounding gender, the body, and technology. This article seeks to address the complex interface between feminism, bodies, and technologies, and explores how this might relate to Barbara Creed's notion of the monstrous-feminine. For example, what happens when the slick technology becomes “contaminated” by monsters and “all those nasty womanly things”? Using processes such as digital imaging, interactive CD-ROM, and cosmetic surgery, women artists Orlan (France), Alexa Wright (UK), and Linda Dement (Australia) utilise the tools of modern technology to probe the limits of corporeality and question Western standards of female beauty. To read their work in the light of the monstrous-feminine opens up potentially liberating modes of knowing and experiencing the materiality of the female body.