The Body as Real and Symbolic Territory: A Feminist Disability Theory Approach of the Photo Book 'Recursos humanos' (2000), by Gabriela Liffschitz

• In Event: The other Fridas: Women, art and feminism in 20th-century Latin America

Abstract

This study delves into the topic of the ill or disabled female in the visual art of professional Argentine photographer and writer Gabriela Liffschitz. This in-depth analysis of the photo book by Liffschitz, titled Recursos humanos (2000), provides relevant information on societal norms, policies, and current debates about healthcare and women’s rights in Argentina. On November 30, 1999 the Argentine photographer underwent surgery for breast cancer and her left breast had to be removed. Gabriela Liffschitz, in Recursos humanos, composes a series of textual and visual self-portraits of her own body, the body of a woman who has cancer. Her photo book records transformations on the surface of the body in self-portraits and texts using illness as a metaphor. Liffschitz is a Latin American woman artist who reflects on issues such as identity, violence, marginalization, and disease. This investigation discusses various concepts from a feminist disability studies’ point of view, such as the disability narrative, corporeal invisibility, normalcy, and stereotyping. In order to address this topic, this work investigates disability identity by utilizing feminist disability theory by Kim Hall, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Susan Wendell. Beauty and femininity are seen as artifice in Liffschitz’s work that portrays an unusual subject that is still almost invisible in scholarly works and biographical accounts. By providing a critical view of this theme from a feminist standpoint, this study places emphasis on the live experiences that ill or disabled Latin American women face, doubly marginalized, not only based on their disability but also their gender.

Author

• Rosita Scerbo