9.11.20 Whose body?
Andrea asked me some interesting questions in our tutorial last time:
'Whose body am I investigating?
My body?
The body of the artist?
Is it gendered? (patriarchal, market based, political?)
Is it cultural- artist vs scientist vs IT?
And the materials and processes I've used - are they still/truly gendered? (Think of the history of knitting and fisherMEN knotting nets, Andrea's grandfather knitted (East/West) Also industrial revolution and male textile factory workers.
Is knitting a feminine gesture?
'Make work that is transgressive and think about what it is to be disembodied.'
At this point I would say that I'm investigating my body, but also every(wo)man.
I use my body to make my work, increasingly; it used to be that the mark of my hand was important, but now it's the mark of my whole body. With metal work, there is a certain amount of physical strength involved - pushing, pulling, cutting- where I use the form and force of my whole body. With casting, again, it's physical labour, but body casting also involves emotional and psychological work.
I use my body as I'd use a life model - I am always present. I study parts of me and use them as models for my work. I measure myself and use my dimensions and volume. Much of my work has an aspect of self portraiture in it at some level. Freud discusses the human drive to replicate one's self as a way to avoid death, possibly through self portraiture, and how it often backfires so that the double becomes an uncanny reminder of our mortality. I've written more about self portraiture and the uncanny here.
So, my work is about me, but it's also about everybody with a body. It addresses existential issues like life and death, individuation, identity, absence and presence, and it has over the years also addressed specific issues like body image, infertility, being a mother. These are all based on my own experiences but also on the shared experience of life. I aim for meaningful autobiographical art with universal resonance. (I initially wrote 'confessional' instead of autobiographical, as there is something of that in it too, but I don't really want it to be about me, in a strange way, although it is all about me!) I often make public things that are normally private, by sharing my own stories. I guess it touches on taboo.
So, my work investigates my body, so is it gender specific? I would say that some of it is, as I identify as female, but I also hope that some of it is gender neutral. That is definitely something to think about in more depth too.
Andrea also challenged me to think more about the gendering of materials and processes eg knitting and stitch and associated femininities, metal and casting, more masculine, hard materials. When I connect these different materials and processes through my work, does it create some kind of gender balance? Maybe adding a pair of women's sandals and a woman's cast feet tips that balance in Parts of me? However, I think that's acceptable as I do call the series of 4 assemblages a self portrait.
I'm definitely not interested in making male bodies per se, but have made breasts, vulvas, my own feet and curvaceous women's bodies. I am, however, interested in the binary expectations of gender and in blurring gender through my work.
Andrea asked me some interesting questions in our tutorial last time:
'Whose body am I investigating?
My body?
The body of the artist?
Is it gendered? (patriarchal, market based, political?)
Is it cultural- artist vs scientist vs IT?
And the materials and processes I've used - are they still/truly gendered? (Think of the history of knitting and fisherMEN knotting nets, Andrea's grandfather knitted (East/West) Also industrial revolution and male textile factory workers.
Is knitting a feminine gesture?
'Make work that is transgressive and think about what it is to be disembodied.'
At this point I would say that I'm investigating my body, but also every(wo)man.
I use my body to make my work, increasingly; it used to be that the mark of my hand was important, but now it's the mark of my whole body. With metal work, there is a certain amount of physical strength involved - pushing, pulling, cutting- where I use the form and force of my whole body. With casting, again, it's physical labour, but body casting also involves emotional and psychological work.
I use my body as I'd use a life model - I am always present. I study parts of me and use them as models for my work. I measure myself and use my dimensions and volume. Much of my work has an aspect of self portraiture in it at some level. Freud discusses the human drive to replicate one's self as a way to avoid death, possibly through self portraiture, and how it often backfires so that the double becomes an uncanny reminder of our mortality. I've written more about self portraiture and the uncanny here.
So, my work is about me, but it's also about everybody with a body. It addresses existential issues like life and death, individuation, identity, absence and presence, and it has over the years also addressed specific issues like body image, infertility, being a mother. These are all based on my own experiences but also on the shared experience of life. I aim for meaningful autobiographical art with universal resonance. (I initially wrote 'confessional' instead of autobiographical, as there is something of that in it too, but I don't really want it to be about me, in a strange way, although it is all about me!) I often make public things that are normally private, by sharing my own stories. I guess it touches on taboo.
So, my work investigates my body, so is it gender specific? I would say that some of it is, as I identify as female, but I also hope that some of it is gender neutral. That is definitely something to think about in more depth too.
Andrea also challenged me to think more about the gendering of materials and processes eg knitting and stitch and associated femininities, metal and casting, more masculine, hard materials. When I connect these different materials and processes through my work, does it create some kind of gender balance? Maybe adding a pair of women's sandals and a woman's cast feet tips that balance in Parts of me? However, I think that's acceptable as I do call the series of 4 assemblages a self portrait.
I'm definitely not interested in making male bodies per se, but have made breasts, vulvas, my own feet and curvaceous women's bodies. I am, however, interested in the binary expectations of gender and in blurring gender through my work.
