Waking Up 

Valeria Duca painted "Waking Up," sometime after 1995, in oil on canvas. It depicts a woman lying in bed, stretching. The painting seems to capture a moment of intimate vulnerability. However, if we think about the history of images of women in art, we can see that the artist is playing with a loaded subject. For centuries, the female nude was a staple of Western art. Often, these images were made by men, for men, and they presented women as passive objects of desire. Here, the artist reclaims that tradition. She depicts a woman on her own terms, relaxed and unselfconscious in her own space. When studying images such as these, historians will ask, who is represented, who is doing the representing, and for whom?