Working Title: Reconfiguring the Sacred: Women Artists and the Modern Religious Space
Supervisor: Dr Caroline Levitt
Advisor: Professor Jo Applin
My research investigates how twentieth-century American women artists reimagined sacred space, challenging narratives which center on male figures in religious art and architecture. Focusing on sacred environments by Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson and Agnes Martin, I seek to analyze how each artist distinctly reconfigured the spaces of worship through their individual visual languages while still evoking a religious experience.
Although it is acknowledged that women artists have long engaged with spirituality to explore identity and envision alternative forms of knowledge, this engagement is rarely examined through the lens of sacred architecture. I will draw on approaches to gender, space and faith to investigate the ways these artists reshape forms and meanings of the modern religious space.
Education
2023-2024: MA History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art. Special Option: Wordplay: The Verbal and the Visual c. 1870 to the present
2019-2023: MA (Hons) History of Art, University of St Andrews
Research Interests
- Modernisms in Europe and the Americas
- Modern and contemporary art and the sacred
- Esoteric and alternative spiritual traditions
- Dance and performance in modern art
