This article explores "prosthesis" as a metaphor of embodiment in art-based research to challenge the utopian myth of wholeness and normality in art and the human body. Bearing in mind the correspondences between amputated bodies and the cultural dislocations of art, I propose "prosthetic epistemology" and "prosthetic ontology" as embodied knowing and being in the world to challenge the disabling, oppressive prosthetics of mass mediation, and to enable the creative and political agency of fragmented, limbless bodies. I discuss the historical origins of "prosthesis," its use as a rhetorical augmentation of language and technological augmentation of amputated bodies, to suggest that the visual language of art disrupts and extends beyond the dialectical closure of "thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis" through the divergent interconnectivity of "prosthesis." Within the context of art education, prosthetic pedagogy is characterized as performances of subjectivity that intersect, critique, and extend beyond academic, institutional, and corporate assumptions to enable the creation of new and diverse understandings through art practice. (Contains 8 footnotes.)