Processual Aesthetics and Feminist Trouble

Within the landscape of current feminist comics production in the Nordic region, Rikke Villadsen is a comics artist notable for works that challenge gendered sexual norms through genre play and visual pastiche. This article explores how Villadsen’s style of comics-making draws on processual aesthetics, a term offered and explored in conversation with Villadsen’s comics and queer theory. Villadsen’s work brings central tenets of second-wave feminist thought into the contemporary context of feminist body politics, resulting in tensions on and beyond the pages of her comics. The article discusses the ways Villadsen’s comics enact feminist trouble through representations of transgressive sexuality, gender roles, and the materiality of the comics as physical objects.