Feminine consumption and the meaning of mess in the work of Athena Papadopoulos

This dissertation looks at the work of Papadopoulos from her 2017 exhibition The Smurfette, with particular inquiry into ideas of femininity, consumption, and mess, and their relationship to one another. The piece presents itself playfully at first, but through analysis of the noxious material choices alone, many motifs act as stand-ins for cultural issues that reverberate throughout the work. I argue that the artist takes stereotypes of femininity, such as over-consuming and self-adorning, and emphasises them to such an extreme that they become satirised and critiqued. This is done through a ‘messy’ application, adding layers of empowerment and reclamation, and further scrutinising the idealised images of conventional femininity. The analysis of The Smurfette is contextualised within the history of consumerism, a range of feminist theories and lenses, and in correlation to several artists who also express themselves via a ‘messy’ practice.