Abstract

This article examines the afterlives of Nefertiti’s bust as performances that stage the intersections of gender, empire, and visual culture. Moving beyond biographical reconstruction, it argues that the bust operates as a repertoire of performances continually re-scripted across cultural sites. Three case studies structure the analysis: the staging of Nefertiti in Berlin’s Neues Museum, which performs colonial possession and the aestheticization of feminine beauty; the digital intervention The Other Nefertiti (2015), which performs resistance through the circulation of unauthorized 3D scans; and the cosmetic “Nefertiti lift,” which performs the queen’s visage through contemporary bodies, inscribing antiquity as a template for modern beauty. Guided by performance studies and six feminist frameworks — radical, Marxist, postcolonial, ecofeminist, post-feminist, and corporeal — the article demonstrates how Nefertiti is continually enacted as sovereign, erased, appropriated, extracted, fragmented, and embodied. It argues that these performances reproduce patriarchal and colonial logics while simultaneously opening possibilities for feminist resistance. By treating Nefertiti not as a static artifact but as a performative repertoire, the article contributes to feminist performance studies, museum and heritage debates, and visual culture analysis. It concludes by calling for feminist curatorial and cultural practices that embrace multiplicity, foreground sovereignty, and resist the immobilization of iconic figures.

Recommended Citation

Khan, Zaryab. 2026. "Performing Nefertiti: Feminist Afterlives Across Museum, Digital, and Cosmetic Cultures." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 27 (Spring): 18-34. 10.23860/jfs.2026.27.02.