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My dissertation examines the intersection of interculturality and embodied feminism in the body art of contemporary Chinese artist Xie Rong. Drawing on Terry Smith’s concept of ‘contemporaneity’, the study investigates how Rong’s performances destabilise fixed cultural and gender identities.

Through her engagement with ‘interrogatory cosmopolitanism’, Rong’s art not only critiques Orientalist stereotypes and traditional Chinese patriarchal norms, but also explores how local knowledge can be utilised to shape innovative modes of thought that address contemporary global political and environmental crises.

Rong’s advocacy for a fluid, decentralised nomadic identity resonates deeply with my own experience as an international student. This case study can thus also be seen as an exploration of my personal journey with cross-cultural identity. My third-year module, Art After Modernism, provided the necessary theoretical foundation for this inquiry. The course examines the transition of artistic practice and theory from postmodernism to the contemporary, with particular attention to how video, installation, performance, and relational art respond to the contemporary antinomy of cultural pluralism coexisting with political conservatism.

Inspired by this module, my dissertation ultimately aims to propose a cosmopolitan perspective to address the rising ethnonationalism and provide potential solutions to the global challenges threatening humanity and the planet.

My dissertation examines the contradictions at the centre of Nazi ideals of masculinity as expressed through visual culture. The project emerged from my interest in the intersections of aesthetics and politics, particularly how authoritarian regimes use the body to communicate ideological values.

This study explores how the glorification of the male body within Nazi ideology inadvertently invited homoerotic readings that destabilised the regime’s heteronormative ideals. The first section analyses the stylised nudity of Nazi sculpture and its classical lineage, arguing that these forms generate homoerotic ambiguity. The second examines Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, where the aestheticisation of the athletic male body invites erotic contemplation. The final section addresses private soldier photographs, demonstrating how the regime’s emphasis on male bonding within the military created a space for homoerotic expression and sexual dissidence.

By foregrounding homoeroticism as a disruptive undercurrent within Nazi visual culture, this dissertation challenges narratives of ideological coherence and ultimately argues that Nazi masculinity was performative, unstable, and internally undermined by its own imagery.