Christine Muller (85)

-De la place pour une fleur -

73x54 - 2010

-D'une coccinelle à l'autre -

73x54 - 2010

-Une envie d'autre chose -

100x70 - 2009

Christine ajoute un dédicace/Christine adds a dedication:

Hommage aux Amazones:

Rescapées d’un naufrage
Trempées par les orages
Elles ont tourné la page
De l’épuisant voyage.

Elles ont dans leurs corsages
De nouveaux paysages
Elles ont dans leurs bagages
Un infini rivage.

A Annick, Thérèse, Chantal et tant d’autres...

Tribute to the Amazons:

Survivors of a shipwreck
Drenched by storms
They turned the page
Of the grueling trip.

In their bodices
They carry new landscapes
In their luggage,
An endless shore.

Dedicated to Annie, Theresa, Sue and many others ...

christinemuller.fr

les amazones.fr

Abha Iyengar (84)

-the body depicted-the young and the old-

Abha writes:

I did this simple drawing to illustrate how the body changes over time from full curves to droops, and how we have to accept the changes and love ourselves as we are, as we change. We may not always be happy with the change. Growing into full blooded womanhood is exciting but not easy, and the change from that to the freckles and spots and sag of old age is even more difficult. We have to accept one fact alone, we can never be divorced from our body. We have to love it, nurture it, accept it and grow into it, even as it grows unyielding and difficult. The realization that 'this is me', this body is an integral part of me, is the first step to love.
I have had difficulty in accepting changes in my body~ when I was pregnant, during times of illness, as I grow older, yet, I have always loved it. it is not perfect, it is mine. It survives and carries on with life.

This Body Is Me

This body, my lover
Who stays with me when all else leaves
In whatever shape it may be
It will never let go till the end.
This body, whom I have loved,
Sometimes nurtured and often ignored
So taken for granted
Till it said, I grow weary of you.
I am heavy, creaky, disjointed, painful,
Yet I am supporting you.
I grow weary with you.
I see the body that I love
That loves me
Tire of being filled with me.
Yet we trudge on
We have no choice.
We live with each other, with a certain fondness
Knowing just where it hurts and where
We can still find joy.

© ABHA IYENGAR, 27th December 2010

www.abhaiyengar.com

Poetry Collection, 'Yearnings'.

Liz Davidson (83)

-The ground of my being-

(1996, from the exhibition "The Sweetness of Truth the Body Reveals")

Mixed media, 67 in H hx 75 in W x 75 in D

Liz writes:

Our bodies, our home, our sanctuary, our ground, our landscape, our story; our soul made visible. Using sculpture, installation, mixed media, college, printmaking, artist books, video, poetry and sound, I explore the richness of the metaphor of the body; the place we call home on the earth. The age old questions of who we are and what are we doing here are examined (although, unfortunately, ultimately not answered ). The mystery of the body, our layers of skin that keep us separate from one another, our longing to be part of the whole, our light, our darkness, the idea of metamorphosis, of transformation: this is the material I work with.

www.lizdavidsonartist.com

lizdavidsonartist.blogspot.com

Sharon Rose Dadang-Rafols (82)

-Habohab-

This diptych is a mixture of oil and acrylics.

Sharon writes:

This painting of mine called "Habohab" in Filipino Visayan Language which means "Sharp Attack" belongs to my Series of Painting exhibited last July 2009 entitled "Babaye" or "Women". This work is inspired by women's struggles and pain from bodily attacks such as harm and abuse in cases of domestic violence and rape. I do a lot of Art workshops for healing young women victims of rape and violence here in the Philippines, some kind of Art Therapy, and in a way helps me to overcome some of my personal struggles and pains in my workplace.

Sharon Rose Dadang on fb

Shadi Rezaei (81)

-Self_Postrait No.1, "Untold Things"-

- Self_Postrait No.2, "Untold Things"-

- Self_Postrait No.3, "Untold Things"-

Shadi writes:

I was born on May 6th 1986 in Iran & started my artistic expression with drawing. Since 2005 I've been Studying Graphic design in Art University of Tehran. I started working as a freelance graphic designer since 2007. My recent project is about aspects of the modern human and also on contemporary human life that is impacted by traditions, with special focus on Persian Typography. (Designed in Bijan Sayfouri's workshop)

shadirezaei.com

Pam Patterson (80)

Pam writes:

A Flash of the Real: Situating a Performance for Change

Sometimes I can hardly use human language to tell how I feel... 'If I were a dog, I'd be shaking and trembling.' Animals don't use words; their bodies speak for them. . . But I am not an animal. I am a human being, an articulate one at that, who is challenged to find words to apply to sensations I've never had before, challenged to find meaning and stability despite a changing body. I'm caught in a relentless metamorphosis.
Barbara Rosenblum in Cancer in Two Voices (1996,166-67).

Susan Sontag writes of the photographic image’s power to haunt us - to bring us to an understanding of the fragility and mortality of human life. However, she faults photography for lacking narrative continuity; it remains fatally linked to the momentary not able to produce ethical pathos in us or, if so, only for a moment.

As a multi-media performance artist, how do I work with this? How do I, as disabled woman communicate my experience of transition and of pain? Why are my bodily changes a matter of public exposure? Can my strategies control/limit/expand the perspective(s) for others?

Bodily change and its accompanying pain, as presence and as content, are not always evident on my body or in my art − the marks of my mastectomy hidden, the swollen joints covered. Artists, such as Orlan, document surgical procedure-as-choice to question our refusal to acknowledge pain. While others, such as Hannah Wilke, photograph their failing medically tortured diseased bodies, exposing our inability to comprehend and effectively respond to her’s and others suffering.

I ask, “Can the experience of the artist be experienced by the viewer and hence facilitate cultural change?” I turn from assuming that images of surgery and illness inherently have the power to portray/project pain, or politically charge the issues and transformative possibilities. Rather I move into a transparent discursive practice intending to expose abjection, reveal narrative and create distance.

Through the “performance” of the image, I capture a “flash of the real” (Barthes), to time “the decisive moment” (Cartier-Bresson) and suspend the ultimate act(ion)s of tension/pain and possibilities (Barba). I explore the insertion of interpretation in the captured moment, multi-media strategies to charge the moment, narrative or counter-narrative to structure memory, and time-based art’s potential to engage time, space and context in encouraging self-reflexivity.

click to view images from a Cellu(h)er Resistance a Body without Organs?

References:
Butler, J. (2005). Photography, War, Outrage. Modern Language Association of America (V.120, #3) May, 822-827.
Kuppers, P. (2007). The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art, Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.
Kristeva, J. (2003). Approaching Abjection. In Amelia Jones, The Feminism and Culture Reader, London/New York: Routledge, 389-391.
Lugones, M. (1990). Playfulness, "World"-Traveling and Loving Perception, in
Anzaldua, G. (ed.) Making Face, Making Soul Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Colour, pp. 390-402. San Francisco: Ann Lute Foundation.
Oughton, J. (2008). A Journey through/around Pam Patterson’s Cellu(h)er Resistance : The Body wth/out Organs?, Toronto: Fado Performance Inc..
Rotman, B. (Online August 1, 2008) Gesture or the body without organs or speech. http://www.wideopenwest.com/~brian_rotman/gesture.html.
Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Wolff, H. (2008). (trans. Nicholas Grindell). The Tears of Photography, Grey Room 29, Winter, 66-89, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Wolff, J. (2003). Reinstating Corporeality: Feminism and Body Politics. In Amelia Jones, The Feminism and Culture Reader, London/New York: Routledge, 414-425.