Visions… it is said that Hildegard first saw “The shade of the living light”at the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. Her paintings are beautiful.
‘Virago’ – Julie Dodds
Virago
/vɪˈrɑːɡəʊ,-ˈreɪɡəʊ/
noun
archaic – A woman of masculine strength or spirit; a female warrior
Origin
Old English (used only as the name given by Adam to Eve, following the Vulgate), from Latin ‘heroic woman, female warrior’, from vir ‘man’. The current sense dates from late Middle English.
From the Oxford Dictionary.
The story of Pope Joan is a Catholic legend dating from the middle ages. According to the story she was a talented and scholarly woman who reigned as Pope, disguising her gender until she gave birth to a child. This caused uproar within the vatican and she and her child were condemned to death. My piece is an exploration of femininity, disguise and spirituality.
Muslin under dress with rice paper discs – The idea of making a dress represented the femininity that was stolen by the rule of the church in the time of Pope Joan. The Pope’s dress effectively becomes a microcosm for the oppressed women of the world, not just in medieval times, but because of the timeless shape of the dress, for women of all eras.
The first idea I had when making the dress was to make a sort of breast plate out of rice paper. This, of course, represents the Christian view of the body of Christ but also becomes reminiscent of breast pads that new mothers use for leaking milk, nourishment and nurture. It’s almost as if Joan’s strong belief in her Lord leads her to trust in her own salvation and protection against the tyranny of man.
I also decided to use red cotton crosses stitched onto and bleeding from the breast of the dress. The red obviously represents pain and suffering and although the crosses are of Christian imagery, the intention is mainly humanistic and even somewhat Pagan. The blood red cotton represents the flow of life, the monthly period that Pope Joan would have had to conceal. A natural phenomenon that was stigmatised against purely on the basis of gender and male, Godly hierarchy. I found this somewhat ironic as surely the early Catholics noticed that woman was put on earth by God to be a giver of life, which is the whole basis of Christendom with the birth of Christ by the Virgin Mother Mary.
I decided that the dress should be suspended to represent her ascent to heaven, but also to show that in her condemnation she had risen above and fooled the biggest superpower in medieval times; the Catholic church. Her life blood reaches the ground to show that the suffering and tragedy of the oppression of woman kind lives on, but her message ascends into legend.
Book- The book that I have compiled represents the story of Pope Joan. It contains a series of prints in linear narrative that summarise the tale of the Pope-ess’s reign. The physical book itself is very much part of the collection as it acts as the context of the whole piece, it deals with the idea and practise of disguise.
Again, I used muslin cloth as a source material as it is an ancient and everyday material. I bound the book over and over again in strips of this cloth just as Pope Joan would have bound and disguised her breasts – a woman’s source of nurture and sexuality. I made an umbilical cord style book marker out of the same material to show the birth of her child, but disguised this itself as prayer knots to represent the suffocation of her child and femininity.
I have included a pair of gloves that the viewer must put on in order to touch and view the book. The ritualistic nature of donning the gloves relates to the ritual in organised religion, but also forces the viewer to disguise their skin as Pope Joan was forced to disguise hers.
The Crosses – This piece is very much the portrait of the collection. It contains two crosses that are made out of bottle caps, each bottle cap containing a small painting that relates to the life and death of Pope Joan.
Although this piece may be the most symbolically striking of the collection, there is a definite element of humour in it. The bottle caps are found materials discarded from my husbands post-work beer that I have collected and recontextualised into tiny, symbolic portraits to represent the suffering of woman under male regime. Again, they become disguised under recontextualisation. The act of hammering the bottle caps to flatten them out into manageable canvases is also quite humourous, as the female artist manually and physically works disguises her work from the male breadwinner.
Wire Sculpture – This piece incorporates two sculpture, a bra, a chastity belt and red shoes. It deals with the idea of the invisible woman.
The piece draws you in with its apparent sexuality by displaying a bra and a pair of knickers displayed to suggest a body underneath, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that the garments contain jagged wire and sharp pins. It aims to automatically twist the audiences perception from alluring to disturbing, much like the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. The wire twists and contorts, showing apparent pain to the wearer but also a strong set of armour that attacks as well as defends.
The idea of using the ‘invisible woman’ works on two levels, one shows us the think line between legend and myth, but the other is just showing the audience what they subconsciously wish to see: another sexualised image of a woman with no substance, disguised beyond meaning, identity or personality. I painted the shoes red as a nod to the traditional colour of shoe worn by the Pope, but alleviated them to suggest empowerment.
The Film – The looped film that I have made incorporates the use of Capriote pointed hats, a traditional head garment worn in Spain and Italy during the Catholic Holy Week. For example, during the Spanish Easter Parade, people would walk through the streets wearing these pointed hats to represent doing penance for their sins, their faces covered so they wouldn’t be recognised. This resonated with my project as it, again, deals with the idea of disguise.
The music used is a piece by one of the first recognised female Composers – a nun named Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179 AD) called ‘O Virtus Sapientiae’, meaning Divine Wisdom.
I have been working on various items for my degree show,this evening I have been using red cotton strands on a dress, and I was thinking of Louise Bourgeois Insomnia drawings for some reason , maybe its the lay of the cotton strands strands .
The ups and downs of preparing for a degree show, well its the same for every one I guess! Today has been a day of preparation, I am not not exactly a dab hand with DIY , and I am rubbish at decoration , although the up side is my clothes are now rocking a Jackson Pollock masterpiece!
As I have been experimenting with tin bottle tops, and thinking about pilgrimage badges and folk art etc, my research lead me to look at Frida Kalo, she was someone who began to experiment with androgyny and cross dressing, in the above photo is a young Frida is dressed in a mans suit.
And later in the above self portrait , she has cropped hair and dressed in a mans suit surrounded by locks of her hair, it is thought that it was a act of mourning after the separation to the artist Diego Rivera. It was also thought that her wearing the suit was to take on his identity as an Artist.
