Feminist appropriation practices as a social criticism tool

The main purpose of this thesis study is to examine the roles of femininity, feminist women artists since the known early ages of art and to make feminist appropriation practices as a tool of social criticism. Various roles were assigned to gender within the social structure. The feminist movement, which began to take shape from the end of the 19th century, became an important political and intellectual movement that questioned gender roles. Moreover, it played an important role in making women more visible in social, cultural and economic life. Feminism has been treated as a four-wave movement until today. Art is one of the fields that cornes the effects of gender inequality. Feminist movements; it caused a huge change in the role of women in the field of art, and more women artists began to be involved in the field of art. From the end of the 1960s, feminist art began to take shape. For feminist artists, the presentation of the body, which is a fundamental part of gender identity and gender role, has an important place. Many feminist artists such as Judy Chicago, Jenny Saville, Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman; produced artworks on the female body. In this study, I had to examine the artwork of these feminist artists in more detail. Also in this process, I had to question the roles of feminity imposed on today's women. In particular; I examined the fact that jobs such as cleaning and dishwashing are mentioned as the duty of women, and at the same time, the reasons why women are attractive and well-groomed, and prefer fashionable clothes according to fashion. In this process, I made a total of 210 artworks in various techniques and sizes. I achieved my goal with 81 of artworks I made. In this work, there are 51 images of my paintings.