Overview

In art of the 1960s and 1970s, numerous women artists engaged with industrial materials such as plastics, contrary to what the discourse of the time would have us believe. As Feminist substances shows, their works offered unique approaches to plastics in art, introducing new material meanings through a feminist lens. With a focus on Europe and Latin America, the book discusses the practices of Carla Accardi, Lea Lublin and Alina Szapocznikow, combining close readings of selected artworks with broader considerations of their social contexts. It explores their use of Sicofoil, plexiglass, plastic inflatables, polyester resin and polyurethane foam to address key concerns of feminist thought in relation to social reproduction, motherhood, memory, desire and illness. Beyond commonplaces of plastics as generic bad materials, Feminist substances considers more complex ways of engaging with synthetic matter, taking into account our messy relationships with these controversial materials.

Full Product Details

Author:   Charlotte Matter
Publisher:   Manchester University Press
Imprint:   Manchester University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.784kg
ISBN:  

9781526193575

ISBN 10:   1526193574
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   05 May 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available, will be POD  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon it's release. This is a print on demand item which is still yet to be released.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Materiality and gender in the plastics age 1 Macho materials and feminist outlooks 2 Lea Lublin: Plastics and the politics of work 3 Carla Accardi: Time, memory and the other story of plastics in art 4 Alina Szapocznikow: Synthetic substances and the sick/erotic body Epilogue: Zombie materials Bibliography Index -- .

Reviews

'Feminist substances is a thrilling, but also disturbing (!), study of the use of plastics in early feminist art. Charlotte Matter shows us how plastics changed the affective terrain of the art world and yielded a new lexicon for the expression of embodied experience and material conditions. The case studies take the reader from the U.S. to Argentina, Italy and Poland showing how the globalization of feminist art collided with this postwar substance, for better and for worse. For this generation of artists, critics and curators, the stakes of materialist criticism are high and could even have fatal consequences. We should all pay attention to this aesthetic history.' Amanda Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the Drive to Waste -- .

Author Information

Charlotte Matter is Laurenz Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

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