The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice

Abstract

This doctoral project, “The Embodied Artefact: A Nomadic Approach to Gendered Sites of Reverence through an Interdisciplinary Art Practice”, moves beyond normative understandings of pilgrimage, God, and artistic scholarly research. Using a contemporary art lens, I travelled in a long durational performance to a multitude of international pilgrimage sites where God-as-Woman is, or has previously been, revered and respected. By moving towards and experiencing not just one destination but many, I have challenged the traditional paradigm of pilgrimage. In doing so, I have undergone a meta-experience whereby visitations to these psycho-spiritual terrains came together as a composite of embodied experiences. This blurring of boundaries seeks to go beyond the particularities of one newly revised gendered site of reverence to consider a process of pilgrimage that moves into and becomes nomadism, thereby developing significant new understandings across the fields of contemporary art practice and pilgrimage studies.