This‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ paper explores Gwen Hardie's fragility “Untitled, 1987” drawing through an integrated art historical, visual, and narrative perspective. Hardie's art, from a historical point of view, corresponds to the late-20th century feminist and process-art emphasis on the "anti-monumental," the use of modest materials to subvert the idealized portrayal of the body. The visual investigation uncovers how her method is instrumental to the message: the delicate paper support imitates the vulnerability of the skin, whereas her brilliant smudging and erasure of charcoal call to the body's transient, fleshly side.

Such a material engagement gives rise to a narrative not of events, but of the lived body, a story where the concert of one's impermanence and vulnerability is where true strength lies. In the end, Hardie's art is an effort to make real, to the senses, the most basic, yet indubitable, fact that the physical body is the foremost, incontestable place of ‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌identity.

Body, Vulnerability, Gwen Hardie, Charcoal, Fragility, Drawings

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