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Abstract
This paper examines Apologia (Artemisia Gentileschi #1) (2018) by Betty Tompkins (b: 1945), a work from her Apologia series that overlays art historical imagery with text excerpted from media responses to #MeToo allegations. Through the formal techniques of overpainting and historical layering, Tompkins interrogates the instability of language and its paradoxical power to reveal and obscure. The paper argues that Apologia (Artemisia Gentileschi #1) functions as a critical lens on the entanglement of cultural and scholarly discourse, weaving together threads from Biblical studies, Baroque history, twentieth-century developments in feminist though, and contemporary discussions about sexual violence. Tompkins merges word and image, bridging popular and academic dialogues on misogyny to reveal the effect of gender in a lingual episteme.