Contingent and Collateral Figures in Art Institutions: Laboured Feminist Lineages

This dissertation considers portrayals of overlooked and undervalued figures who have been rendered structurally peripheral within contemporary art practices. I suggest select artists enact institutional critiques that aspire for a radically different art world by first engaging with an expansive understanding of existing conditions. To do so, I take up queer feminist art theory that expands the remit of institutional critique to include daily life and foregrounds unrecognized maintenance labour that supports art institutions. Complementing analyses of marginalized forms of labour, my dissertation considers feminist lineages of artists who reckon with demands of art institutions. Furthermore, my analyses of labour invite self-reflexive meditation about creative labour of research and writing. I introduce the project with a brief sketch of theoretical concerns about museum studies, institutional critique, queer feminist theory, and new materialisms that inform my analyses of case studies of artistic projects that centre various forms of labour and refusals of labour within different kinds of art institutions. By examining forms of labour that retain gendered connotations such as security and janitorial work, I interrogate and complicate gendered labour conditions and experiences of gender within the artworld. Throughout my case studies, I evaluate workforce hierarchies that underestimate employee capacity for sophisticated engagement; I consider instances of overlap between guarding labour and artistic labour that interrogate implicit affective expectations required from museum support staff; further, I argue select feminist performance artists redeploy domestic labour as inquiries into feminist art lineages while drawing attention to division of labour within institutions. Moreover, I suggest these performances claim collective models of aesthetics and align with feminist art criticisms that challenge dominant patriarchal models of individual genius. Using a framework of institutional critique, I examine artistic refusal and withdrawal with attention to personal tolls of mythmaking, networking, and self-promotion. Taken together, these artworks remind us that institutional models of art and aesthetics are inseparable from the concealed support labour required to maintain them: labour is not incidental to art production and reception, but fundamental to conditions of its existence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Art History

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Simpson, Alexandra L.

Advisor dc:contributor.supervisor

• Kibbins, Gary

• Institutional Critique
• Contemporary Art
• Museum Studies
• Queer Feminist Theory
• Work and Labour
• Autotheory

Statement dc:rights

• Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada
• ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
• Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
• Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
• This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1974/36012

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:queensu.scholaris.ca:1974/36012