Donna Dodson (Brandeis University)
Gender bias and a constricted “feminine” ideal prevented the Greeks from recognizing Amazons as women. The Amazons were “accounted as men for their high courage, rather than as women for their sex; so much more did they seem to excel men in their spirit than to be at a disadvantage in their form” (Lysias). For that reason, the Amazons in Donna Dodson’s wood sculptures transform historic misunderstandings about these ancient warriors. Dodson’s work asserts these legendary women in her contemporary sculptures, as a way to teach the history of Amazons as women who did not fit binary gendered ideals of femininity.
The word queer is broadly defined in this presentation as gender non-conforming women, such as masculine, manly, or courageous women. Dodson’s sculptures evoke gender fluidity and the otherness or “queerness” of the Amazon women. She does this is by using the distinct features, colors, of male animals on her female figures. Further, the artist uses the traditional medium of wood sculpture in her contemporary art practice as if to say that these women have always been with us but gender bias has prevented us from recognizing them.
Donna Dodson’s wood sculpture are grounded in the literature that complicates Amazon’s gender non-conformity. First, this work acknowledges modern archaeological findings that validate the historical presence of the ancient women warriors beginning with the ancient Amazons of the steppes. Next, it draws from Penrose (2016) who provincializes the Greek and Roman reception of the Amazons by localizing the domesticity of women to the Greeks and providing an expansive view of warrior women in the surrounding cultures. The Greeks mythologized the Amazons to the point of unreality since they did not fit into their ideas of gender for women (Mayor). In Greek mythology, the Amazons are met with violence and death, or presented as femmes fatales as if they are being put in their place or punished for their gender non-conformity, and as a way for the Greeks to show patriarchal dominance and control (Hardwick).
Dodson’s sculpture is an antidote to these ancient Greek myths. Dodson’s sculptures invite us to consider an alternate world that celebrated Amazons as powerful, victorious women warriors. These wood sculptures invite us to ask what would the Amazon’s mythology be if they were creating and telling them?
This presentation will contribute to the conversation about the very definition of women, and gender, as evidenced in the Amazons by presenting contemporary visual art that represents both sexes and genders. Using contemporary art practice as a research methodology in the example of Donna Dodson’s artwork, this paper will present visual art as a form of research to explore the idea of queerness and gender non-conformity of the courageous Amazons who challenged the Greeks who encountered them.