The ancient Roman poet Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ depicts women turning into elements of the natural world. A shift from the male gaze in art occurs during the Renaissance period when women begin to represent themselves through self-portraits. By the 1970s and 1980s, self-portraits become tools that allow women to redefine themselves through transformation: they play with the metamorphosis that society had historically imposed on them, turning them into objects of male desire and stereotypes.
