This week I have really been focusing on my research and what work really influence me and make me produce the work I do.
I stared of looking at some artist that has influenced me throughout this process. Firstly I have really been looking at the work of Hannah Wilke. In her work she often features herself as a posing glamour model. Her use of self in photography and performance art, however, has been interpreted as a celebration and validation of Self, Women, the Feminine, and Feminism. Conversely, it has also been described as an artistic deconstruction of cultural modes of female vanity, narcissism and beauty. Wilke referred to herself as a feminist artist from the beginning. I really like the way she use herself as a canvas and how she pushed herself to create these images even when she was on her death bed. She is a very inspirational woman.
The next artist I have been looking at is Frida Kahlo, she often painted herself and she always painted herself with big black eye brows and a slight moustache. She painted to occupy her time during her temporary immobilization. Her self-portraits were a dominant part of her life when she was immobile for three months after her accident. Kahlo once said, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”. Critic wrote once about her that “It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography.”
Also I have been revisiting some of my research previously on the artist Orlan. Her work is something that has always fascinated me, the way she use her body as a canvas and does these crazy live performance pieces of her having some kind of plastic surgery. I like this idea of face deformity and how she is reconstructing her own face. She was once asked was she trying make herself more beautiful? “No, my goal was to be different, strong; to sculpt my own body to reinvent the self. It’s all about being different and creating a clash with society because of that. I tried to use surgery not to better myself or become a younger version of myself, but to work on the concept of image and surgery the other way around. I was the first artist to do it,” she says, proudly.
This is link to her talking about her work which I found very interesting.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2009/jul/01/orlan-artist-interview
I have also been editing some of the photos that I previously edited of me facing myself with and without makeup on. I choice to sew pleats over these images to, however I did not like these ones as much as the other I don’t think they work as well with the sewing lines on them I personally think they are more powerful without the sewing on them I don’t think they work as well.
Some more of the eddited photos with the sewing and pleats on them.
I think I prefer these three images out of all of them, maybe because on some on them you can barely make out my unmakeuped face. However it was more for the fact that I think they work well with less lines on them and that I have become more face dysmorphed then just being totally destroyed so that it is unrecognisable. The less lines work better I think. However with the end photograph I think it works well with all the lines blanking out one side of my face as this is the side that I have no makeup on, also the way it is all neat and tidy.
Over the past week I have been working with my photos that I took the week before. I have been editing the photos using a sewing machine and pleating the paper to hide certain parts of my face. I hate certain parts of my face so I have edited out the parts I don’t like by creasing the paper to hide it then covering it so no one will be able to see what is behind, I also sewed over the top to seal it in. I hate looking at parts of my face so for me it was a relief to be covering it up so no one else can see what I could.
However this is not really putting me out of my comfort zone it’s not pushing me to expose my real self which is what I wanted to achieve for my final degree project. So I what I tried to do in every picture I added less and less pleats and sewing lines on the photographs of my face which made me feel much more uncomfortable, Which I what I want to achieve.
Furthermore I think I will carry on with my video based work and this had much more of a powerful affect I felt, and it also portrayed more on what I was trying to get across.
Over the past week or so I have been working on some video pieces of me removing my makeup and trying to capture how I feel when removing my makeup.
For me it is as if I am uncovering my true self and break down this wall of self-confidence that I falsely put up.
I called the piece ‘Destruction’ as for me it is like self-destruct , I am breaking down this more eye pleasing outer wall and uncovering the grey bare, less eye pleasing under coat of my face. I hate removing my makeup it makes me feel very unconfutable and very unconfident in myself.
The video I have edited and added music to it, I chose some instrumental simple music that I felt described how I was feeling when I was removing my makeup. I have always edited the video so one version is colour and one is in black and white. I like the colour version as I think you can see the colours and textures of my skin and makeup, However the black and white for me makes it harder to watch it makes it (I feel personally) more unconfutable to watch and upsetting. I also make the video close up so all you can see is my face and bare skin. I still haven’t decided yet which version I like more.
Also i personally hate watching this video and cant bare to watch it.
Destruction (Black and White)
