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Sunday, December 25, 2011

Elinor Carucci (135)




From "A limited glimpse into my most recent body of work, my children."

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Marsha Parrilla (134)





'Gris' Conceived and Performed by: Marsha Parrilla
Piece created for: THE BODY-NOTHING ELSE


Marsha Parrilla's company website:
danzaorganica

Inspired by a world where technology binds people in unprecedented ways, Marsha Parrilla (Boston) and Omar Robles (Chicago), two Puerto Rican exiled artists, decided to create a virtual movement dialogue through video.
binariusdance

Monday, November 28, 2011

Helen Payne (133)

-bather-
(the urge to push)

-standing nude-
(the urge to push)

-untitled-
(the urge to push)


Helen writes:

Birth is among our most dramatic and transformative experiences and yet it is seldom depicted in art. Women, who have been under the microscope in the history of art, are left undepicted when giving birth. It is a rich vein, filled with drama, questions of identity, mystery, joy and sexuality. These works (The Urge to Push) seek to explore this uncharted territory. It is happy art that sticks a finger in the eye of the male gaze and sexualized depictions of women.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Mimi Shapiro (132)



wrestling the volcano!! altered book:



-wrestling the volcano!! altered book collage, watercolor and wax, spreads from the book !-

Mimi writes:

on January 25th 2011 fell and broke my ankle on a volcano in Auckland NZ. here are a few of the photos and the book that i made ! to document the ordeal - it was an interesting learning experience ! in patience....since after surgery ! i could not walk on the ankle for 7 weeks....

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Billie J. Maciunas (131)

To what great history
does she refer when she answers
the moon’s terrible pull
with rage and torment
that the earth will not swallow her yet

not the history of multiplication
but maybe of single numbers
she is a straw in the smoke bitten
wind.

©billie late 70s


Songs to dead lovers:

if you have not consented to be my lover
I claim you still
like a cold and killing envelope of snow
over all hope of new growth’s promise

but you consumed by the fierce heat
of elemental will to vanish boldly
elude my crude grasp
you must be an innocent birth
and my death the center of your
blazing heart

©billie 1979


Last Will and Testament:

All that matters is the skeleton. If
In ideal repose, fetal is good--
protective, like Aztec child mummies.
But if flatly forced, let the box be simple
pine. Fast feast of deathly horror, and
eternal peaceful noble bones.
Don’t embalm me. Give my living parts
to the living. Remember me
in your movements, your best unguarded
expressions, as I do you.

©billie 02

Friday, October 7, 2011

Martha Wilson (130)

Growing Old, July 15, 2009.

My Authentic Self, 1974/2011

Before and After 1974/2008

Beauty and Beastly, 1974/2009.


Excerpt from 'Martha Wilson: The Liminal Trickster,' by Lauren Bakst on BOMBLOG, 10/5:

Martha Wilson’s solo exhibition, "I have become my own worst fear," comprises a series of self portraits that repeatedly distort the self until any fixed notion of subjectivity has utterly dissolved. Spanning from 1974 to 2011, these works reveal Wilson through specific markers in time, and invite the viewer to imagine the lived space beyond each image. Through the juxtaposition of younger and older, of before and after, Wilson makes tangible the space between these captured moments. Her images seem to ask, how did time pass between then and now? Furthermore, what was the embodied experience of that passage? In Beauty and Beastly, a profile image of Wilson in 1974 is positioned adjacent to a profile image of Wilson in 2011, a portrait of the artist peering simultaneously backwards and forwards at herself in spite of and through time. Rather than to spiral into an unending cycle of self reflection and critique, when Wilson looks at herself, she also looks at the viewer, beckoning us to examine the value systems that shape our ways of seeing. Her image and text work invoke the expectations and preconceptions that are written and re-written on women’s bodies every day. The terms “beauty” and “beastly” applied by Wilson to the young and old images of herself reference the persistent intertwining of the personal and the political, bringing awareness to the cultural discourses that frame the female body.

(to read the entire post by Lauren Bakst, follow the link to BOMBLOG.)


Monday, August 29, 2011

Siglinde Kallnbach (129)


Siglinde Kallnbach's Performance during the Opening of her Solo Exhibition at Ludwig Forum for International Art Aachen/Germany 2008/9


Link to Siglinde Kallnbach's international lifelong
"a performancelife"- project (since 2001):
empathy and solidarity for people suffering from cancer.

a performancelife-e. V. on fb


Siglinde Kallnbach

Monday, August 22, 2011

Amanda Rossmiller (128)



eternal expanse of white
stretches below
belly of a fish,
fitted under fat, pale bosoms
scored with deep blue veins
like a fine cheese
shoved in a shadowy corner
of la fromagerie

once ripened in youth
bursting with nectar tastes
sweet in the mouth of young
lovers
watch
as the fruit wrinkles
then puckers
when flies start to gather

plant saplings in thick, moist
soil
found below,
honeysuckle me home


©Amanda Rossmiller

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Giustina Surbone (127)

Venus of Willendorf, oil on canvas 66"x44"

Ravaged, oil on canvas 32.5"x 26.5"

Eye of the Beholder, oil on canvas 60"x 44"


Giustina writes:

i am fat. i am thin. i am hurt. i am hiding. i am starving. i am dependent. i am self-medicating. i am out- of- control. i am obsessed with my body. i am repulsed when i look in the mirror. i am a distortion of myself. i am young. i am fecund. i am lush. i am round. i am soft. i am the object of your desire. i am powerful. i am a vessel through which life flows. i am the madonna. i am a distortion of myself. i am old. i am sagging. i am drooping. i am bent. i am barren. i am crumbling. i am cemented. i am unrecognizable. i am lonely. i am sick. i am invisible. i am a distortion of myself. i am searching. i am strong. i am bright. i am vital. i am loving. i am joyful. i am gentle. i am compassionate. i am charitable. i am brave. i am worthy. i am trustworthy. i am old. i am young. i am fat. i am thin. i am gay. i am straight. i am sick. i am well. i am rich. i am poor. i am self-accepting. i am peaceful. i am at peace.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Nina Sobell (126)

Baby, Chickey!, performance in 1982.
Photo by Chris Shearer.
For the video of this performance and other performances, click here.


From the Exhibition catalog Nina Sobell, at Gallery AREA 53, 2008
Curated by Evelin Stermitz:

In her performance art video Hey! Baby Chickey Nina Sobell appears nude playing with a raw cooking chicken. With a few simple manipulations, she eradicates the cultural distance between mother and woman as sexual being. Playing on the symbolic connection between food and sex, cooking is transformed into sexuality, but the involvement of the dead chicken pushes that sexuality towards bestiality and necrophilia. The scene is further complicated when the same chicken is given the role of baby. Sobell plays with the chicken, rocking it, holding it up by its arms as if teaching it to walk, and swinging it from breast to breast in what can only be described as a milking dance. This collapsing of the baby role with the chicken’s already established roles of dead animal, food material, and sexual object violates other taboos, including infanticide, cannibalism, and pedophilia.
Chris Straayer, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-orientations in Film and Video, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Janet Culbertson (125)

-the large one-
How I feel ...


-odalisk fat-
I am trying to see the addition of extra pounds as classic rather than problematical.
I use the Ingres odalisque pose.


-In between-



Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Evelin Stermitz (124)

SILENCE
experimental performative video
DV PAL/NTSC 2009
loop / total time 00:01:00:00
Sound by Elise Kermani, Ear Music, 2001.
Performance and Video by Evelin Stermitz.
(click image to view video)

Textual structures on body fragments as inscriptions on the female body of metaphorical injuries by rape violence are merging into an image of speechless suppression by male supremacy. Rape remains as a silent terror and global transgression, as a silent field of unspoken reality, because the afflicted women are broken.

This video work is created for FemLink The International Video Collages, on the collage theme of 'Aggression' for the year 2010.


WHITE BAND CUT
video performance
DV PAL/NTSC 2007
3 channel video
total time 00:09:25:00
Performance, Sound, Video by Evelin Stermitz.
Special credits to Nina Sobell for access to her studio.
(click image to view video)

The ritualised cutting of a white band wrapped around the body symbolizes the metaphoric disposal of inner and outer bonds as restrictions in an internal monologue. The woman can be seen as a gift as well as a captive. The white band describes muted halcyon segues flowing in a void space.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Cade Pemberton (123)

6 x 3.5 foot acrylic work on paper, 2011.


Cade writes:

The Nude speaks to the power and vulnerability of women and the debate over weight as beautiful or a curse.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Carol Radsprecher (122)




Carol writes:

I have always needed to use visual representation of the female body—my body—in my work. When I was a young woman, my particular body shape was a popular one in my culture (American). As my body has aged (and continues to age – no reversing this process!), its shape is not so conventionally appealing. Stage 1 breast cancer, diagnosed twelve years ago, did not result in any glaring—I use that word pointedly—changes to my body, but age is doing its whittling away, puffing up, slackening, firming, wrinkling or smoothing away…. I can live with it!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Jackie Skrzynski (121)





drawings from the hybrids series

Jackie writes:

I began making these drawings as I started my marriage and family. Strange as it may sound, they helped me calm down about the fears I had regarding labor and motherhood. In fact, these drawings helped me persevere as an artist and see what I was doing in a larger context. The hybrids recast creatures from myths and folklore into contemporary archetypes for the modern family. Emerson’s advice to “first be good animals” suggests a respect for what civilized life so often ignores. I am, after all, an animal. The figures may be mistaken for a quasi-sexualized freak show, but intend to reveal a more complex metaphor. For example, the absurdity of the reclining nude cum sow pokes fun at the notion of ‘supermom.’ The woman is erotic, deformed, a goddess and a pig.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Friday, June 17, 2011

Nuala Cabral (119)




An experimental film about street harassment. Walking Home, Nuala says, is for the walkers, the talkers and those who say nothing. She wanted to portray a diverse range of people, because street harassment is universal, just like all forms of violence. Including voices of several women explaining their names, signifies universality and solidarity. Walking Home attempts to question and disrupt the acceptance and the pervasive silence around these everyday interactions.


More on Nuala's Anti Street Harassment Efforts

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tamara Wyndham (118)

Secret Glory
from the Body Prints, acrylic on cotton

Tower of Light
from the Body Prints, acrylic on cotton


Tamara writes about the Body Prints:

My body prints are self-portraits in which I examine my anatomy and posture, and how the muscular tension, bone alignment, and balance of my body indicate ways in which I open or shut myself to the world. I also focus on the aura surrounding and emanating from the body. I also draw upon images from ancient burial shrouds, mummies, Neolithic cave paintings, Eastern and Western medical charts, Kirlian and x-ray photography. The process of making these involves one or more actual contact body prints, which I may then work further with brushes, my fingers, airbrush, and various splattered painting techniques.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Ellen Schippers (117)

-3 images from 'beauty'-

-silent cry-




Life performance 'beauty' at the women in paradise festival 2007, performer: Jeannette Legger



Impression of the exhibition Frauensehnsucht (2010) at Loods 6, Amsterdam. The second edition of a triptych about gender.

Ellen's statement:

Ellen Schippers is a multi-disciplinary artist, who combines wearable sculptures, performance, dance, music, light and poetry in theatrical video-installations. She creates a “fantasy” world that is continuously bursting at the seams.
Her work is about gender, like stereotypical male and female images, ideals of beauty and about the contradiction between image versus authenticity. Schippers strips fixed images by inflating and deconstructing them and reveals the authentic emotions that are hidden behind these selfmade images.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Dorien Plaat (116)


Frans Ellenbroek (Natural History Museum Brabant, the Netherlands) says about Dorien's work:
The figures in Dorien's paintings non-verbally say: 'my outside is paper thin, so you can look inside, look how beautiful I am, not 'beautiful' in the sense of a transient physical beauty, but beautiful with eternal value, authenticity and thus with vulnerability.' That way the figures of Dorien show themselves in total vulnerability and are therefore not weak but strong, precisely because they are at peace with their vulnerability and, even proudly so, cherish it.


Monday, April 25, 2011

Elizabeth Menges (115)

-Self Examination-

Elizabeth writes:

My work explores the specificities of bodies, including my own, as well as the tension between examination and objectification in portraiture. As a female I have a heightened awareness of the body I was born into and its tumultuous history, from socially constructed perceptions of beauty and body image to individual battles with eating disorders, mastectomies and aging.

I am currently painting specific portraits of the women around me, eliminating all elements of narrative except for signifiers, such as jewelry, nail polish, underwear, bruises, scars, freckles and birthmarks that tell the story of the subject. How do we as women define ourselves in relation to our physical beings? It is not the exposure of so called 'flaws', but the uncomfortable confrontation of viewer and subject with a painstakingly honest image--and eventual self-acceptance--that motivates me to paint my subjects in this realistic manner.


Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Evita Weed (114)




-the spring in the air series-

Evita adds:

Un dia más me quedaré sentada aqui
en la penumbra de un jardin tan extraño
cae la tarde y me olvide otra vez
de tomar una determinación...

Tropiezos incontrolados ...
futuros inesperados


[I'll remain seated here for one more day
in the half-light of such a strange garden
the evening falls and I forget again
to make a decision ...

Uncontrolled stumblings ...
unexpected futures]

evitaweed.tumblr.com
evitaweed2.tumblr.com
www.flickr.com/photos/evitaweed
www.flickr.com/photos/evitaweed2
issuu.com/evitaweed

Friday, March 25, 2011

Tara Verheide (113)

-Simulacra//Simucation-
(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
Many of the early panels projected what I assumed to be the polemic between traditional female roles regarding creation, motherhood, nurturance and gender-based sexuality/responsibility as opposed to postmodern, media enhanced goals and ideals. I attempted to visually express that the solutions contemporary culture offers to this feminine dilemma are mass produced methods of appeasement and simulated nurturing.

-Finger of Fate-
(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
This panel is in dialogue with Mary Bernstein’s panel upon which a quote from David Bohm written “There is confusion between self-image and the body”. It also repeats the hand images seen in so many panels. The two elements combined appeared to me as the bloody truth.

-Preservation-
(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
This panel responds in combination to the numerous panels depicting fetus’s and Mary Bernstein's panel “To Preserve or not to Preserve”.

-Desire is Manifold-
(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
This was my original response to Dana Salisbury’s “Milk and Eggs”. Her use of what appear to be actual x-rays, breast-shaped, plaster forms, flute and straw communicated what I assumed to be a sense of anxiety, yet acceptance with a female role ... especially as it relates to medical necessity. I repeated some of the compositional arrangements of this panel and made a personal attempt to respond to its’ content.


Tara Verheide has made 15 panels for the The Mother Tongue Project. This artists' project has been informed by many sources, particularly the ideas of physicist and philosopher David Bohm. Bohm investigated the nature of individual thought and its tendency to defend its own assumptions. He experimented with verbal dialogue groups in an attempt to create a stream of meaning out of which would emerge a new understanding. Inspired by his philosophy, Mother Tongue applies techniques of visual interchange to stimulate and make visible the flow of the dialogue process. New panels are created in response to other artists' panels. For more info on Tara Verheide's panels shown here and for her other pieces visit the artist's gallery on Mother Tongue.