The Aesthetics of Healing Representations of Sexual Trauma in Gita Hashemi’s Grounding: States of Gender

Abstract

The following thesis explores the complexities of visual representation in relation to women’s experiences of sexual trauma, focusing on Gita Hashemi’s durational performance, Grounding: States of Gender (2017). Specifically, I look at the prolonged psychic pain that stems from the infinite negotiating of traumatic memory and the simultaneous struggle to have these experiences be seen, heard, and validated. With reference to theorizations of mourning (Butler, 2004; Fitzpatrick, 2013) and feminist approaches to psychotherapy (Herman, 1992; Magnet, 2017) my study of Grounding responds to a contemporary turn towards embodied and autobiographical feminist research methods. Using critical methodologies of visual analysis and narrative inquiry, I seek to explore the therapeutic value of the aesthetic or, what I refer to as an aesthetic of healing. Acknowledging how subjectivity functions as both a site of knowledge and as a record of lived experience, I ask how Hashemi’s forms of narrative embodiment work strategically, revealing traumatic realties while simultaneously orienting the viewer towards a position of reflexive engagement within broader sociocultural contexts.