The piece below was a product of a block print, overplayed an average of ten to fifteen times which through a process of pariedollic imagining I found resembled the fruit of the fig tree which once grew in my backyard.
The piece is titled: They fell every year, found first, devoured, we sifted to find something to still.
Every summer, my siblings and I would crawl through the grass in my backyard, crawl up the tree, and attempt to find one or two figs that had not already rotted, been eaten by birds, or ants... It was a process of trying to find something that existed still, sweet, innocent, and untouched, amidst a very chaotic environment.
Next, I have been going through a process of devolving a performance piece, for the end of the semester.
Because my artwork is a process of reframing, transforming, and giving a sense of rebirth to past experience that aids in cultivating a sense of identity, I will create a situation where I will write and rewrite more positively, my experiences into letters or stories, on at typewriter. The typewriter will act as a way to invigorate the pages with touch, physical energy, and also serve as a form of printmaking itself. These prints, will record history, a record, reflection, and refined narrative of various experiences that have created my complex and compiled identity as a multiculturally influenced female bodied individual. Through greater awareness of the viewpoint in which I inherently perceive the world due to beliefs defined by both learned and created narratives, I believe I will be able to interact with the world more justly, and recognize both the boundaries created by limited experience and the beauty found in being able to expand it.
This process is one that I hope instigates reflection of others, on narratives that define the experiences they have, and whether these truths serve them as individuals or inhibit them.
The typewriter will potentially be attached to my hips, a symbol of weight carried by female experience which is inherent to my being in the world thus far. It will hint towards a rebirthing process, and will cultivate a vulnerable environment requiring endurance, because I will be physically holding the weight of the typewriter.
When each story is written, and reframed, I will detach it to the typewriter and potentially hang it on a contraption similar to a clothesline. Which I will continue to slowly move down towards the floor from the platform I will be standing on In the gallery space.
It will be accessible to the viewer, and able to be taken with individuals persons. Each letter or story will finish with an "and" and people will be able to take them, respond, or not, and mail them back to me.
I will compile the remains into a book. An emotionally engaging, personal, and never ending account of one persons experiences thus far. This is the prologue.
I individually hope to achieve a sense of changing and reframing past experiences into stories in which a victim can become a hero, and inspiration in the viewer to do the same, noting that this ability to have our "stories" transformed is one of the most powerful ways in which our experience of life can be "sculpted."
It is a piece of recognition, acceptance, and a honoring of events we sometimes erase, forget, or try to hide because they feel too painful, inhibiting, or too much a burden to carry.
I am still figuring out the details, such as attire (I am thinking about sewing a felt jumper, that will be somewhere in between a dress and a pair of overalls) and other more detailed aspects such as construction of parts, paper, how to invite audience participation, etc.
I will bring it up at critique.
Thank a bundle if you read this all.
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