Abstract
The exhibition "III – An Exploration of Ageing and Female Identity" challenges deeply entrenched stereotypes about aging and female identity through the works of Regina artists Leesa Streifler, Deborah Potter, and Sheila Nourse. The artists deconstruct traditional visual language surrounding aging women by employing domestic items, unconventional materials, and provocative visual strategies. The exhibition aligns with emerging scholarly perspectives on art's role in challenging societal perceptions of aging women, presenting aging bodies as vibrant, complex entities possessing agency. The analysis draws upon an intersectional feminist theoretical framework, emphasizing the intricate interplay of gender, age, embodiment, and representation. The artists' works transform potential vulnerability markers into powerful statements of resilience and individual identity, inviting viewers to recognize older women's rich, complex inner lives.
1. Introduction
In a cultural landscape that often renders older women invisible, exhibition III emerges as a provocative challenge to deeply entrenched stereotypes about aging and female identity. Through the works of Regina artists Leesa Streifler, Deborah Potter, and Sheila Nourse, the exhibition transforms our understanding of aging from a narrative of decline to a vibrant, complex becoming.
The exhibition III aligns with emerging scholarly perspectives on art's role in challenging societal perceptions of aging women. The artists in III exemplify what Richards et al. (2012) describe as "alternative images of ageing," which aim to create nuanced, complex representations that resist simplistic or patronizing portrayals. Streifler, Potter, and Nourse deconstruct the traditional visual language surrounding aging women by using domestic items, unconventional materials, and provocative visual strategies. Śliwińska (2016) suggests that such artistic approaches are crucial in questioning skin-deep portrayals of female bodies and challenging ingrained cultural narratives about aging, femininity, and worth. Particularly noteworthy is how these artists transform potential vulnerability markers—sagging bodies, discarded objects, oversized furniture—into powerful statements of resilience and individual identity. They invite viewers to recognize the rich, complex inner lives of women often rendered invisible by societal structures.
2. Analytical Framework
The analysis of III draws upon an intersectional feminist theoretical framework, emphasizing the intricate interplay of gender, age, embodiment, and representation. This framework, informed by scholars like Judith Butler (1990) who theorizes gender as performative, and Jack Halberstam (2005) who examines alternative gender expressions, recognizes identity not as a fixed entity but as a dynamic construct shaped by social interactions, cultural narratives, and personal experiences.
The artworks in III challenge normative conceptions of female aging, presenting bodies as sites of performative resistance. They defy conventional imagery of aging through transgressive performances, Potter's sculptures and Streifler's drawings destabilize traditional aesthetics. They depict aging bodies not as objects of pity or decline but as vibrant, complex entities possessing agency. This echoes Butler's (1990) notion of performativity, where gender and aging are ongoing processes of embodied negotiation. The artists in III, by presenting aging bodies as active and agentive, disrupt the narrative of decline often associated with older women, offering a counter-narrative of embodied resilience.
Nourse's Golden Salon Series explores identity formation through the lens of material culture, reminiscent of how scholars like DeSilvey (2006) examine the significance of objects in shaping personal and collective narratives. Constructing portraits from domestic objects and discarded materials, Nourse challenges conventional portraiture, suggesting that identity is not merely a physical attribute, but a complex narrative interwoven with lived experience and the symbolic weight of personal artifacts. Like the work of artists who repurpose found objects, Nourse's assemblage technique underscores the constructed nature of identity, echoing Butler's (1990) concept of performativity, where identity is continually shaped through repeated acts and embodied practices. This mirrors Thompson’s (2016) exploration of how discarded materials can be transformed into relics, imbued with new meaning and highlighting the fluidity of meaning-making.
The exhibition confronts the cultural tendency to render older women invisible, engaging with bell hooks' (1992) concept of the "oppositional gaze." Through provocative visual strategies, the artists challenge dominant power structures and reclaim narrative agency for marginalized subjects. This underscores art's role in challenging societal perceptions of aging, particularly the stereotypical representations of older women. The exhibition's disruption of conventional aesthetics and presentation of aging bodies as sites of resistance resonates with Richards et al.'s (2012) call for "alternative images of ageing." Furthermore, the artists' strategic use of visual elements echoes Śliwińska's (2016) assertion that artistic interventions are essential in dismantling ingrained cultural narratives about aging, femininity, and worth.
The exhibition III situates itself within a complex theoretical landscape that interrogates the intersectionality of aging, gender, and representation. As Margaret Gullette (2004) compellingly argues in Aged by Culture, aging is not a biological inevitability but a socially constructed narrative that can be actively reimagined and resisted. The artists in III embody this resistance through their provocative visual strategies, transforming aging from a narrative of decline to one of dynamic potential.
Drawing on Simone de Beauvoir's foundational work The Coming of Age (1970), the exhibition challenges the systemic marginalization of older women. De Beauvoir's seminal observation that "society looks upon the elderly as parasites" resonates powerfully with the exhibition's core mission of reclaiming narrative agency for aging women. The artists deconstruct what Margaret Morganroth Gullette (1997) terms "age decline ideology," presenting aging as a complex, multifaceted experience of continuous becoming rather than a process of diminishment.
Contemporary gerontological research further contextualizes III's interventionist approach. Thomas R. Cole's The Journey of Life (1992) provides a nuanced genealogy of cultural representations of aging, highlighting how artistic representations can challenge deeply entrenched societal narratives. The exhibition's artists strategically deploy what Sarah Lamb (2014) describes as "embodied agency"—a performative resistance transforming aging from a passive experience to an active, generative process of self-creation.
Interdisciplinary scholarship from performance and critical age studies offers additional theoretical frameworks. Lynne Segal's Out of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Aging (2013) provides a critical feminist perspective that resonates with III's artistic strategies. Segal argues that aging can be a site of radical potential, a perspective powerfully embodied in the exhibition's provocative visual language. The artists' approach also aligns with what Anne Basting (2009) calls "creative aging" — a paradigm that reimagines aging not as a process of loss, but as a dynamic terrain of creativity and resistance. By presenting aging bodies as sites of vibrant complexity, Streifler, Potter, and Nourse challenge what Elizabeth Markson (1996) describes as the "social death" often imposed on older women.
This analytical approach synthesizes insights from performance studies, feminist theory, and visual culture studies. By treating ageing female bodies as dynamic, performative spaces, III transcends traditional representational boundaries, offering a nuanced critique of ageist and patriarchal visual economies. Recent scholarship [De Vuyst & De Graeve, 2024] has further emphasized the potential of "unruly" representations that challenge normative constructions of ageing, gender, and sexuality, a perspective powerfully embodied in the exhibition's artistic strategies. The artists in III employ distinct artistic techniques that amplify their conceptual exploration of ageing and female identity. Their approaches transcend traditional representational modes, using materiality, colour, and composition as critical tools of narrative and resistance.
Streifler's use of fluorescent paint and oil stick constitutes a radical chromatic intervention, echoing Sonia Anderson's (2012) discussion of colour as a disruptive force in feminist art. By employing vibrant, almost unnatural colours to depict ageing bodies, she disrupts conventional aesthetic expectations, reminiscent of Fauvist painters' use of bold colour to challenge traditional representation (Elderfield, 1976). The fluorescent hues challenge the muted, desaturated visual language typically associated with ageing in Western art (Jones, 2008), transforming bodily "imperfections" into sites of vivid, unapologetic celebration, aligning with the body-positive movement's embrace of diverse corporealities (Orbach, 2011).
Potter's ceramic sculptures and Streifler's drawings emphasize textural complexity to articulate bodily experience, recalling the emphasis on materiality and process in artists like Eva Hesse (Celant, 2002). Rough, uneven surfaces, visible brushstrokes, and deliberately imperfect modelling reject the smooth, idealized representations of the female body often found in classical sculpture (Osborne, 1992). These textural choices serve as tactile metaphors for lived experience, suggesting that aging is not a process of deterioration but of accumulation and richness, echoing the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi that finds beauty in imperfection and impermanence (Koren, 2008). This resonates with the work of contemporary ceramicists like Magdalene Odundo, whose hand-built vessels celebrate the irregularities and textures of clay (Barlow & Odundo, 2009). The emphasis on texture also aligns with art historical discussions of the grotesque and its celebration of the unruly and unconventional body (Harpham, 1982), offering a counterpoint to idealized representations of the female form.
Nourse's Golden Salon Series introduces a radical spatial reimagining. By constructing portraits through assemblage and positioning domestic objects in unexpected configurations, she challenges the spatial conventions of traditional portraiture, echoing the fragmented and multi-perspectival nature of identity explored in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). The layered compositions suggest identity as a non-linear, multidimensional construct, resonating with postmodern feminist approaches to representation (Butler, 1990). This disruption of conventional spatial arrangements aligns with Grosz's (1994) concept of the body as a "motile, shifting assemblage," constantly renegotiating its relationship to space and challenging fixed notions of identity. Using domestic objects further complicates the spatial dynamic, creating a dialogue between private and public spheres and challenging the traditional relegation of women's experiences to the domestic realm (Kaplan, 1996). This resonates with the work of artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who blurred the boundaries between art and domestic labour (Celant, 1993). The spatial reimagining in Nourse's work thus is a powerful critique of traditional representational strategies, offering a more nuanced and complex understanding of female identity.
The gestural qualities in these artworks function as acts of resistance. Streifler's bold, lavish strokes, reminiscent of the expressive brushwork in Abstract Expressionism (Anfam, 1990), and Potter's exaggerated sculptural forms, echoing the distorted figures of Egon Schiele (Kallir, 1990), reject the delicate, restrained aesthetic often imposed on representations of women's bodies (Nochlin, 1988). These gestural strategies embody what art theorist Lucy Lippard (1976) describes as "the personal is political," transforming individual artistic expression into a broader critique of societal norms and echoing the feminist embrace of embodied experience (Grosz, 1994). Using these painterly strategies, the artists in III depict ageing women and actively reinvent how we visually understand and experience female ageing, supporting the claim that art can challenge societal perceptions of ageing. This resonates with the work of artists like Judy Chicago, whose Dinner Party (1979) used unconventional materials and forms to celebrate women's history and challenge patriarchal narratives (Chicago, 1996). The gestural language employed in III thus becomes a powerful tool for disrupting conventional aesthetics and reclaiming visual agency, mirroring the broader feminist project of challenging dominant representational modes (Pollock, 1988).
3. Artistic Counterpoints: Freud and Giacometti
The works in III can be critically examined through the distinctive corporal representations of Lucian Freud and Alberto Giacometti, two artists who radically reimagined the human body's visual language. Where Freud and Giacometti approached bodily representation with unflinching intensity, the artists in III share a similar commitment to exposing the raw, unvarnished essence of human physicality.
Lucian Freud's nude portraits offer a profound counterpoint to the exhibition's approach. Known for his brutally honest depictions of flesh, Freud's subjects—often elderly or corpulent—are rendered with a forensic precision that strips away romantic illusions. Like Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), his paintings present bodies as topographical landscapes of vulnerability and strength. Similarly, the artists in III reject idealized representations but diverge from Freud's clinical gaze by imbuing their subjects with agency and emotional complexity.
Giacometti's sculptural works provide another critical lens. His elongated, attenuated human figures—often reduced to skeletal essences—speak to the existential fragility of human existence. Where Giacometti's figures seem to be disappearing, dissolving into space, the artists in III assert corporeal presence. Streifler's drawings, with their lavish strokes and fluorescent interventions, directly challenge Giacometti's minimalist deconstruction, presenting aging bodies as sites of vibrant, unapologetic existence.
The exhibition's artists share with Freud and Giacometti a fundamental preoccupation: the body as a complex narrative space. Yet, III distinguishes itself through its explicitly feminist methodology. Unlike Freud's often detached male gaze or Giacometti's existential abstractions, these artists centre female experience, transforming bodily representation into an act of political resistance. Potter's ceramic sculptures, in particular, echo Giacometti's sculptural explorations of human form while radically departing from his aesthetic. Where Giacometti's figures are often isolated and monumental, Potter's are intimately scaled, embedded with domestic narratives that speak to the lived female experience. Nourse's assemblage portraits similarly challenge traditional portraiture, using objects to construct identity in a manner that would intrigue both Freud's psychological depth and Giacometti's existential approach. The comparative analysis reveals III's unique contribution: these artists do not merely represent aging bodies but reimagine them as dynamic, resistant, and profoundly meaningful entities. They transform what Freud saw as mere physical terrain and what Giacometti might have perceived as an existential abstraction into powerful statements of individual and collective identity.
4. Painterly Skill Manifest
Leesa Streifler’s work resonates deeply with the key elements of great painting as outlined by the celebrated and acerbic art critic Brian Sewell. Sewell emphasized that “the first duty of any painter is to master their craft” (Sewell, 1994, p. 23), and Streifler demonstrates this mastery through her bold, expressive use of oil stick and fluorescent paint. Her lavish strokes capture the textures of aging bodies—sagging skin, wrinkles, and bulging fat—with a sensitivity and precision that reflects her deep technical skill. These are not simply crude depictions but carefully crafted works that balance realism and abstraction, allowing her to transform what might be considered grotesque into something visually compelling and emotionally evocative. Moreover, Streifler’s deep understanding of paint and anatomy further elevates her work. She knows how to manipulate her medium to bring out the human body's physicality, capturing its weight, texture, and movement with an almost visceral accuracy.
What sets Streifler apart from many other artists is her ability to learn from and incorporate elements of others’ work into her own, a quality that Sewell would likely have admired. Sewell wrote, "the great painter is never an island; they are a bridge between what has come before and what is yet to be” (Sewell, 2000, p. 51). Streifler exemplifies this idea, drawing inspiration from the art she observes and integrating it into her practice in a way that feels entirely her own. This willingness to learn and evolve pushes her work into the top tier of contemporary art. Unlike many artists who remain confined within their personal style or vision, Streifler’s openness to influence allows her to continually refine her craft and deepen her work's intellectual and emotional impact.
Sewell also believed that originality was a hallmark of great art, writing that “the painter must say something new, or say it in a way that has not been said before” (Sewell, 2000, p. 45). Streifler’s work is refreshingly unique, tackling the subject of aging women’s bodies with an honesty and humour that is rarely seen in contemporary art. In a world that idealizes youth and beauty, her choice to celebrate sagging breasts, spider veins, and rolls of fat is an act of profound originality. Her use of vibrant, fluorescent colours to depict these so-called imperfections redefines beauty and compels viewers to reconsider their perceptions of aging. By doing so, Streifler creates a body of work that challenges societal norms and stands apart as entirely her own.
Sewell argued that great art should provoke a strong emotional response, stating that “a painting must move the viewer, whether to joy, sorrow, or even discomfort” (Sewell, 1994, p. 31). Streifler’s drawings succeed in doing just that. They are, as Sewell might say, “both beautiful and terrible” (Sewell, 1994, p. 31), eliciting a complex mix of emotions. Her works invite viewers to confront their own fears of aging and mortality, yet they also celebrate the vitality and humanity of aging bodies. The humor in her work—found in the exaggerated sagging or the playful use of colors—adds a layer of joy that tempers the discomfort, making the experience of viewing her art both challenging and rewarding.
Challenging conventions was another quality Sewell admired, as he wrote, “The artist must be brave enough to defy the expectations of their time” (Sewell, 2000, p. 52). Streifler’s work precisely addresses the often-ignored realities of aging, particularly for women. In a culture that marginalizes older women, her drawings are a radical act of defiance. Rather than hiding or idealizing the aging body, she confronts it directly, forcing viewers to question their biases and societal standards. Her work disrupts the narrative that aging is something to be feared or hidden, offering instead an empowering and thought-provoking counter-narrative.
Finally, Sewell valued intellectual and philosophical depth in art, asserting that “great art must engage the mind as much as the eye” (Sewell, 1994, p. 12). Streifler’s work does just that, asking profound questions about identity, mortality, and societal values. Why do we fear aging? Why are older women so often rendered invisible? What does it mean to live a life of value? These are the kinds of questions that her drawings provoke, making them not only visually striking but also deeply thought-provoking.
Despite working from Regina, Saskatchewan—a location far removed from the major art hubs of the world—Streifler’s work carries the weight and originality to position her as a major international painter. As Sewell might observe, “location is irrelevant when the art speaks loudly enough” (Sewell, 2000, p. 59). Her ability to transcend geographic boundaries through the power of her ideas and technical mastery suggests that history will eventually judge her work as among the most significant of her time. With time, Streifler’s art will likely resonate so profoundly that Regina, Saskatchewan, will come to be known as the place where she created her groundbreaking work. Her contributions to contemporary art will elevate her legacy and bring recognition to the region where she worked, proving that great art can emerge from anywhere. In exploring aging and female identity, Leesa Streifler embodies many qualities that Brian Sewell associated with great art. Her technical mastery, originality, emotional resonance, willingness to challenge conventions, and ability to draw from others while forging her own path elevate her work to a place of profound significance. As Sewell wrote, “The great painter does not merely record the world—they transform it, revealing truths we might otherwise ignore” (Sewell, 2000, p. 67). Streifler’s work does precisely that, confronting uncomfortable truths while finding beauty, humour, and humanity in the experience of aging.
Speaking as a collector, these qualities make Streifler’s paintings eminently collectable, and they should have future purchases and currency in national and global art markets. This is something to keep in mind when viewing the exhibition.
5. Concluding Reflections
The exhibition III profoundly reimagines ageing female identity, challenging deeply ingrained societal narratives. Using innovative artistic strategies, Streifler, Potter, and Nourse create a powerful visual language that recognizes the complexity, resilience, and vibrancy of older women's experiences. Their work transcends traditional representational modes, transforming potential vulnerability markers into potent statements of individual agency and collective resistance. III is more than an exhibition—it is a radical act of visual resistance. By centring the experiences of older women, Streifler, Potter, and Nourse do not merely represent aging; they reimagine it. Their work invites us to see beyond societal limitations, recognizing that identity is not a fixed point but a continual, vibrant process of becoming. The artists' strategies—bold chromatic interventions, textural complexity, spatial reimagining, and gestural resistance—collectively construct a powerful narrative of ageing as a dynamic, generative process. Rather than a linear decline, ageing is a complex terrain of ongoing identity formation, resistance, and self-determination. By centring on older women's experiences, III challenges viewers to recognize the profound depth, beauty, and agency inherent in women's lives across different stages of embodied experience.
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