Women with whom I have discussed my recent work have preferred the fat and happy pictures much more than the thin and angry, fat and threatening etc. I feel I should consider this, as I don’t want to reinforce the “victim” despairing female stereotype. But at the same time women have been culturally persuaded to expect the positive/pretty/acceptable self-image.
One of my ambitions is to express the strength of the female of the species, break out of the trap of feminisation.
I explored some of this in my dissertation. I looked at the hand stitched texts of Agnes Richter, Lorina Bulwer, Elizabeth Parker contrasted and compared to the blankets of Tracey Emin. My theme was how trauma could be the catalyst of innovative stitching, i.e. used but subverted the skills taught to women in making a sampler; largely to increase their marriageability. Perhaps noteworthy that none of these women married.
These sculptures by Xu Hongfei exhibited in Florence recently, inevitably make the viewer smile. Maybe women see them as carefree….but powerful. Matriarchal? as unthreatening, [unless one of the women sat on them], but in today’s culture the fat would be seen as unwholesome, unhealthy, self indulgent, unlike previous centuries where a well fed person was to be envied. A fat wife was a trophy to show how wealthy was her owner……life is complicated, subtlety is not my strong point but I aim for it.
