The Mangbetu vessel depicts adornment favored by elite women at the turn of the twentieth century in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Elongated foreheads, hair woven in a basket-like arrangements, and body tattooing indicated female status and beauty.

The symmetrical features, ordered hair, and calm demeanor of the veiled female head – once part of a public monument constructed on the Athenian Acropolis during the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 CE) – likewise connote ideal femininity but also establish a visual language of political and cultural authority, deploying the representational style characteristic of fifth-century BCE Greek art to suggest continuity between Hadrian’s Rome and Athens’s perceived golden age.

Similarly, the standing Jama-Coaque female effigy from Ecuador represents a high-status woman in a yellow turban, black skirt, and gold jewelry. The clay slabs on either side of her head symbolize draped cloth, and her arms show the imprint of stamped, tattooed, or scarification patterns.

Naophorus statues, often found in ancient Egyptian temples, depict men or women offering a naos-shrine to the gods to demonstrate their piety. The hieroglyphic inscription invokes queen Ahmose Nefertari, a powerful New Kingdom queen whose cult was popular among artisans in ancient Thebes.

Indian religious traditions have historically interacted and influenced each other—ritually, mythologically, visually, and socially. This 19th-century watercolor painting represents the Buddha, not in the robes of a renunciant, but as the ninth avatar of Vishnu, wearing the yellow garment often associated with the avatars.

Elizabeth Catlett’s work often explores questions of identity, particularly through the lens of the African American female experience. Catlett combined woodcut, screenprint, and color linoleum cut to create this image; the multiplicity of techniques, the rendering of the woman’s face in both negative and positive, along with the colorful line of women evoke the inclusive nature of Catlett’s activism and her call for gender and racial equality.