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The 2023-24 Adam Kay Prize for Best Undergraduate Dissertation in Art History is to be shared by Matilda Nettleton, Simal Rafique and George Vincent, three 2024 graduates. Learn more about their outstanding research here.

Matilda Nettleton: Menstruation, Misinterpretation, and Controversy: To What Extent Did 1960s and '70s Artists in America Challenge Menstruation as a Taboo

Image caption: Judy Chicago, Red Flag, 1971, Photo-etching on paper, 508 x 610 mm, London: The Tate. © 2024 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London. Photo: The Tate.

‘To state the obvious, menstruation and more broadly, the menstrual cycle are often dismissed and derided’ (Chris Bobel). Feminist artists in the 1960s and ‘70s America challenged long-held cultural taboos surrounding menstruation by provoking normalisation and change in their artworks. In art history, discourse primarily focused on the subversion of patriarchal notions against women during the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement, yet there is little analysis that centres solely on menstruation. 

There is an emerging field in anthropological and sociological discourse on menstruation in the twenty-first century, however, which reiterates the static status of menstrual taboos in present-day society proving that there is still a lack of acceptance surrounding the topic. In this dissertation, I show how the artists Judy Chicago, Shigeko Kubota, and Carolee Schneemann transgressed menstrual taboos, but they faced challenges within their individual movements that led to the neglect of menstruation from the Neo-Avant-Garde collective’s art historical discourses and history. 

Simal Rafique: Terra Infirma: Cartographic Imagery and Installation Art by Mona Hatoum

Image caption: Mona Hatoum, Interior Landscape (detail), 2008. Bedframe, coat rack, bird cage, desk, chair, pillow, hair and other materials.

Mona Hatoum (1952 – ) is a British-Palestinian visual artist and important figure in the international art world. Her diverse production, which has evolved from Super 8 videos and performance to large-scale sculptures and installations, is well-documented in gallery interviews and exhibition catalogues. 

However, there has been limited research into Mona Hatoum’s employment of cartographic imagery which is prevalent in seminal installations such as Hot Spots and Present Tense where the representation of terrestrial globes, cartographic grids and geopolitically-contested maps emerge to signify social disorder.

My dissertation offers a unique insight into how Hatoum interrogates the status of cartography as an apparently objective and abstract representation of space by experimenting with the conventional signifiers or pictorial techniques of the medium (such as line, colour, projection and perspective.) 

This dissertation will address how Hatoum portrays the political character of cartography as a medium that realises the violent division of land onto paper thus administering the precariousness of social belonging, citizenship and human rights. 

To convey this, Hatoum’s frequent usage of ephemeral and tactile materials provocatively undermines our grasp of the cartographic image as an objective reconstruction of the world. 

As indicative of a postcolonial turn in global contemporary art, installation art offers Mona Hatoum a technique for merging disparate objects and images which enable her audience to consider the hybrid subjectivity of her diasporan aesthetics through a more embodied gaze.

George Vincent: Saint Francis Embracing the Crucified Christ: Franciscus alter Christus in two Seventeenth Century Spanish Paintings

Image caption: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Saint Francis Embracing the Crucified Christ, 1668. Oil on canvas, 277 x 181 cm. Seville: Museu Belles Arts.

This dissertation explores the portrayal of Saint Francis of Assisi as alter Christus in two seventeenth-century Spanish paintings: Francisco Ribalta's 1620 depiction and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's 1668 rendition, both illustrating Francis embracing the Crucified Christ. 

Through a detailed visual analysis, the dissertation demonstrates how these paintings represent Francis's mystical union with Christ in a unique and highly effective manner, marking a significant development in the iconography of Franciscan art. 

The study delves into the historical and theological context of Francis as alter Christus, examines his depiction in earlier art, and situates Ribalta’s and Murillo’s works within this broader tradition. The conclusion emphasizes the exceptional nature of these paintings in conveying Francis's divine intimacy and ultimate mystical union with Christ.