Surrealist Femicide: Exploring the Nature of Gendered Killing Through Representations of Women in Art

There is a certain nexus between art and crime; while crime has long served as inspiration for artistic expression, this paper argues that visual representations of women and discourses of sex and violence within specific art movements also serve as inspiration for violent crime. Bridging the gap between art and crime, this paper first sets out the theoretical grounding of the arguments presented within, with a focus on the connections between power, control and femicide, drawing from the Foucauldian tradition. The paper then turns to consider representations of gender, violence and killing in film and fine art, before examining the various syntheses between the Surrealist movement and femicide. This paper aims to interrogate how cultural, political and social discourses, including as they are produced/reproduced in art, are implicated in the commission of gendered violence, specifically here femicide, and what this tells us about the relationship between these discourses and power, control and violence.