To coincide with our Girls Rule issue, Contributing Visual Arts editor Susanna-Davies Crook invited 21 artists who are women to contribute artwork to create this artist image project: contributing an ongoing dialogue around the body, voice, hand and heart – all pop tropes of embodiment often levelled at the work of female artists. All this week, artists such as Jennifer Chan, Holly White and SALT's Jala Wahid will be sharing images around each motif. Keep checking back on Girls Rule: The Artist Image Project for more. 

VOICE – Artists / writers engaging in theory, text and writing; a confessional state

With the insidious rise of communication technologies, words flow from open mouths and minds, spilling out across the ready and waiting internet in a constant play of interiority and reflection. LiveJournal paved the way for gut feelings to be broadcast, and vlogs, blogs and tweets have followed as a medium for communication. Often fated never to be spoken aloud, narratives are fragmented and enacted across these multiple platforms. Words are loosed from the individual every which way, challenging what it is to write, speak, and communicate a self. Here, five contemporary artists and writers consider voice through image. 

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Image from 'A Meeting Outside Time' by Fran Cottell, performance, 1988 and lyrics from 'After Cease to Exist' by Throbbing Gristle, 1977. Selected by Helen Kaplinsky, curator of 'Damn braces: Bless relaxes'.

Say Not

"Cutting down, crossing out and piling up a selection of notes collected over the past few years. Half-forgotten thoughts speak again, a show of noisy saying, not saying." Erica Scourti, www.ericascourti.com 

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"Quote: Sara Ahmed." Rozsa Farkas, www.arcadiamissa.com

"A page from the diary of a 15-year-old sister - lets speak with ourselves at a distance and make a space for women's desire to be free. Diagrams. We don’t know who we are and that keeps us empty; empty enough for you to enter us." Naomi Pearce, www.naomipearce.co.uk

Garden of the Goddesses

"Finding the door to the women's restroom at the Garden of the Gods National Natural Landmark locked, Cynthia is forced to tend to her private cosmetic and bodily rituals in the out-of-doors." Shana Moulton, www.shanamoulton.info