Laughing to disobey: humor and irony as strategies of visual resistance in feminist art of the Spanish Transition

Abstract

Feminist art has been approached through interpretative frameworks that have tended to prioritise denunciation, the gravity of the conflict or the expression of anger, thereby relegating other equally effective political strategies to the background. In contrast to this restrictive reading, this article analyses the use of humor and irony as specific forms of visual resistance in feminist art produced during the Spanish transition. Adopting a feminist epistemological approach, the study focuses on the practices of Esther Ferrer, Isabel Oliver and Paz Muro, examining how their works incorporate languages linked to visual culture and media imagination to subvert hegemonic discourses on femininity. Through parody, playfulness and exaggeration, these artists challenge the aesthetic canon, the confinement of women to the domestic sphere and the cultural construction of the supposed lack of female talent. This work argues that irony operates as a specific form of symbolic resistance which, far from softening the conflict, introduces a critical distance capable of generating shifts in systems of representation and activating critical readings of images.