ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a selective survey of the ways in which sharks, as iconic sea creatures, have been represented in the visual arts in ways that have reproduced and amplified traditional notions of masculinity, femininity, and normative heterosexuality. Sea monsters and shark images from the classical and romantic periods of Western art appear, alongside shark sculptures, installations and performances from contemporary Western and Australian Indigenous arts. The chapter argues that despite the ubiquity of representations that bolster gender stereotypes and heteronormativity, resistant readings of human-shark interactions are also possible. Such readings offer a means of imagining and enacting more positive relationships amongst humans and between humans and other animals.
