Fontbona, Isabel

The engine of the proposal is located in the exploration of possibilities offered through the malleability of one specific body, the body of an athlete dedicated to the world of bodybuilding competition in her own skin. From an autoethnographic perspective (as a researcher, as a female natural bodybuilder competitor, and also as a performance artist), I will take the gesture of gaining muscle, as a result of being involved in this corporeal-sports practice (bodybuilding), the main point of analysis. This proposal turns the gaze from sports to arts. While in sports terrain these muscular sculptures are neutralized by the regulation (and with those, also the message they can offer), through Art freedom is allowed. Art becomes the spearhead, the awkward thing that moves you to reflect on.

The present proposal will take as a reinforce of the discourse one specific performance carried out by the same author of the current presentation, Isabel Fontbona: Corporeal Turbulences. Between Absurdity and Resistance (October 20th, 2020 – Barcelona, Spain): 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Pod5DLMiM&t=15s&ab_channel=ArtsSantaM%C3%B2nica

Corporeal Turbulences. Between Absurdity and Resistance allows us to debate if this way of living female identity, build through muscles, can be a tool of resistance, insofar as it subverts what is expected as such; or if on the other hand, it is a simple submission to other strategies of bodily and image limitation.

Isabel Fontbona (1987) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Girona (Spain). She has a BA in Philosophy and a BA in Art History, as well as a MA in Humanity Research. She is currently completing her dissertation on the artistic and gendered interventions enabled by female and trans bodybuilding practices. The foundation of her research lays out in gender studies, sociology, art theory, philosophy, queer theory, body modification, and sports. The dissertation involves theorizing body identity, representation, performance, and gender issues. In this academic frame, she also gives lectures and performative-conferences regarding her research in several university contexts around Europe and also internationally. She has been imparting some classes internationally: in L-Università ta' Malta, Malta; Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany and also in University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, where she developed her doctoral research stay for four months. Fontbona is also a natural bodybuilder competitor, and a performance artist too. She explores this malleability of the body with her own skin, through bodybuilding, in order to question the binary categorization regarding gender distinction, body stereotypes and in some cases challenging herself to the limits of the endurance of her body.

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