Project 10: Research
For the final
project my visual stimulus comes from skin, animal skin, which provides an
array of pattern, texture and color combinations. Skin on the
other hand has direct reference to our identity. Hence our body/skin is often
used as a medium where we practice who we are. Our skin color, social status,
class, nationality, gender, religion, family, all the way down to what we
choose to wear define who we are. Being used as a metaphor for skin, textiles can become
an important tool to express identity. Keeping all these
in mind, I divide my research into two categories:
- First a theoretical analysis: An investigation of artists who worked with the concept of identity: how they discuss, articulate and represent identity.
- Second a more practical analysis: The historical and contemporary use of animal skin in design and fashion. Here my objective is to observe the design practices and in which context designers used animal print.
Research Part 1: Identity: Work in progress:
August Sandler (1876-1964): I’d like to start
with photographer August Sandler
and his People of 20th
Century body of work in which Sandler photographed German people from all
walks of life. This work from 1910s to 1930s is published in a book called
“Faces of our Time” (1929). His portraits of ordinary people didn’t agree well
with Nazi regime’s ideal Aryan type and his book is banned and many of prints
destroyed.
I chose Sandler
because his portraits show the rigid boundaries of identity of the people
living in early 20th century: workers, farmers, artists, housewives,
clergy, doctor etc. You can see who is who from these portraits and the
hierarchy among them becomes clear.
August Sandler People of 20th Century
At the turn of the century documentary
photography had a claim of being “real” and hence exposed truth. Today we have
a more cynical view about it. Nevertheless photography played a crucial role to
explore and define our identities. Sandler’s work is one of the first examples
of this practice.
Cindy Sherman (b.1954): Cindy Sherman is one of my favourite women photographers. She is a contemporary
photographer who question how our (gender)
identities are constructed and congealed via images we consume through mass
media, art and cinema. Sherman uses the portrait tradition often. Photographing herself as the subject she re-creates the well-known
iconic images/scenes within our cultural collective memory. By doing so she not only underlines the stereotypical
identities woman are affiliated to, but also unbalances the power between the
photographer/director/artist and its subject.
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| Cindy Sherman - Film Stills Untitled No21 |
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| Cindy Sherman - Film Stills Untitled No92 |
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| Cindy Sherman - Art History Series |
Cindy Sherman Untitled Series continued
Grayson Perry: “Our most beautiful and complex artwork we can make is our own identity”:
Grayson Perry is a well-known British artist who
often films his projects and process of working. I was very interested in his
2012 “All in the Best Possible Taste” series for Channel 4, in which he argued
that our socioeconomic environment and our class determine our aesthetic taste.
Spending time with various families, observing objects and décor of their home, and their life, he produced a series of large tapestry pieces.
His new Channel 4 series “Who Are You?” looks closer to the
individual. I both watched the series and went to the exhibition at National Portrait Gallery. In his exhibition leaflet he says: “Our sense of self feels
constant but our identity is an ongoing performance that is changed and adapted
by our experiences and circumstances”.
Perry chose individuals who are somewhat at
crossroads going through a period that re-evaluates their identity: change of
gender, fame, status, religion, disability and health. He looks at alliances
with our family, nation, religion, or groups. He spent time with his subjects:
a fallen from grace politician Chris Huhne, TV celebrity Rylan Clark, Mother of
5 Islam convert Kayleigh, sex changing teenager Alexandre.. all of whose story
is awe-inspiring. Although he argues that he is snapshotting their ‘own’
narrative of ‘who they are’; he also positions them into his ironic but emphatic
narrative.
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| Grayson Perry: The Huhne Vase |
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| Grayson Perry: Jesus Army Money Box |
- Fragmented pieces linked together in complex ways
- Layered (past - present, old – new, born into - chosen)
- Linked to the people we love and trust (that’s why when we lose someone we love, we feel like we lost a part of ourselves)
- Looking for something certain. This certainty anchors and comforts
- Reinventing (finding new groups, new alliances when existing ones don’t fit)
- An ongoing process.. (and hence flexible)
- As Grayson puts himself: “it is a never ending negotiation between loyalties we inherit and the ones we chose”
Perry is not a stranger to identity questions. A
cross-dresser himself he uses and performs his alter ego within his artwork all
the time. It is interesting to watch him starting with an idea, observing his
subjects, sketching them and then turning them into a visual narrative and
final work. For example he produced a silk scarf for a Muslim convert Kayleigh,
an jolly pinky flag like embroidered piece (contrast to militarist graphic
language decorates the streets of Ireland) representing an Irish unionist
group, a vase to represent fading memories of an Alzheimer’s patient, a heroic
statue for a sex changing teenager, a screen printed poster announcing Deafness
is not a disability but a way of living...
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| Grayson Perry: The Ashford Hijab |
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| Grayson Perry: Britain is Best |
Within his Channel4 show, it was curious to watch how
he interprets these identities and puts them into the context both he observes
and defines at the same time. The results are thought provoking and siting
pretty out of space among all well-established portraits and sculptures of the
National Portrait Gallery.
Perry works with old techniques like pottery,
textiles, tapestry and he uses them very provocatively. I think Perry’s success
in today’s art scene is a result of him employing these overlooked techniques to examine the challenging contemporary issues.
Louise
Bourgeois: An archeology of oneself as an existentialist exercise
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) was an influential
French American artist who worked with variety of materials (textiles,
sculpture, print and drawing) and provided us with a thought-provoking body of
work, confronting gender identities through exploration of her own psyche. Her
main source of inspiration was her own life, mainly childhood. She constantly
exposed painful memories of her childhood and adolescence within her art.
Although this process can be dismissed being autobiographical, it refers to a
more universal status of human experience; reaching deep into her own psyche;
she taps into ours as well.
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| Louise Bourgeois |
Her work exploring sexuality, anxiety, rejection,
love, resentment doesn’t provide a comfortable viewing. When my tutor suggested
I research Bourgeois, I remember seeing her phallic sculptures at a university trip to The Pompidou Centre in Paris (2001, Media Studies
Solent University). At the time I though her work will add to the “angry
feminist” stereotype. (Although I remember thinking her work is doing a great
service by bringing phallus back into visual cultural circulation hence it has
been castrated from public domain since ancient Greek times. Same can be said for Grayson Perry).
Bourgeois is not interested in making us comfy. “I really want to worry people, to bother
people,’’ she told The Washington Post in 1984. “They say they are bothered by
the double genitalia in my new work. Well, I have been bothered by it my whole
life”.
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| Louise Bourgeois: Janus fleuri 1968 |
She is exposing issues pushed down under female
psyche by social convention, motherhood, sex, body image, etc. She is honest
and daring enough to bare it all, making art that comes from emotions, processing
them and giving them a form. I find that her choice of sculpture as a medium is
telling; as if she wants to give these emotions a “body”, a physical existence.
In a documentary about her work she says “In
order to liberate myself from the past I have to reconstruct it, make a statue
out of it and get rid of it through making sculpture”. (Tracey Emin on Louise Bourgeois: Women Without Secrets -
Secret Knowledge)
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| Louise Bourgeois: Spiral Women 2003 |
Bourgeois was unknown until she was in her 70s (maybe
there is still hope for us too:-). NewYork Museum of Modern Art presented a
retrospective exhibition of her work in 1982. From then she exhibited widely
and renounced as a very influential feminist artist.
I have visited Tate Modern this weekend to see her
works on paper. I found her drawings from her memory very expressive and but
surprisingly soft. The childbirth and motherhood series, ink on wet paper, are
both harsh and kind at the same time. The images are gentle but color red breaks
its softness. We think motherhood as life giving; a great connection but
Bourgeois images also communicates its ambiguities and difficulty.
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| Louise Bourgeois: The Family 2008 |
For a work about her hometown and her family where
she created a series of table napkins: a great but unusual object to look back
through. I thought only a woman could make that connection, many relationships
are forged on a dinner table. The interlocking web-like big prints with organic
lines, shapes are complex but not aggressive. And of course the drawings the
spider. The Maman is her most famous work. I find it curious that she choses
such an aggressive animal to represent motherhood. It resonates her personal childhood
experience with her nanny who became his father’s mistress. It makes me think
that maybe motherhood can be a potent act; hence nurturing can be a both tender
and aggressive.
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| Louise Bourgeois: Embroidered Spider (Not in Tate exhibition) |
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| Louise Bourgeois: My Inner Life 2008 |
Bourgeois is an enigmatic artist. I admire her
honesty and her integrity. I enjoyed the fact that she used textile techniques and embroidery in her work widely. She proves that it takes a great
courage to be true to yourself.
One can also mention Tracy Emin, a well-known
contemporary British artist questioning gender identities through exposing her
life experiences in her work. Like Bourgeois, Emin uses textiles often and in
her latest exhibition at White cube she used embroidered sketches of her own
body on big canvases.
Extras: On my visit to Tate Modern, I also seen Richard
Tuttle placed an installation in Tate’s turbine hall. It is a part of the work
called : I Don’t Know: The Weave of Textile Language. The other part is an
exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery. Approaching the enormous sculpture from
upstairs, I was a little disappointed, because I felt the fabric presence was
minimal and I didn’t understand why it didn’t cover the structure. It felt
unfinished. Looking it from below,
feeling like an ant, I realised that he used fabrics to create forms and
shadows which adds fluidity to otherwise sturdy structure. Working with fabric
at this magnitude must be challenging. It is about colour, shape and space
rather then print, or pattern.
Richard Turtle: tate Modern Turbine Hall Installation, I don't Know the Weave of Textile Langauge
I have also seen Tate collection Energy and Process: within
which I spotted several artists who worked with textiles:
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| Nicolas Hlobo: (Macaleni Lintozomlambo 2010) |
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| Anetta Messengers The Pikes Installation 1992-3 |
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| Geta Bratescu’s works Medeic Callisthenic Moves 1980 |
All these works are great examples of how contemporary
artist use and work with textile as a medium.
Sigmar Polke retrospective: Polke is very experimental artist. Throughout his career he constantly challenged visual and
political orthodoxies of the world. Walking around the exhibition I felt his
passion, hard work, and obsession with color and scale. Some canvases were huge
and have a presence you cannot bypass. I specifically liked the paintings in
which he used shop-bought fabrics instead of white canvases. What stroked me
the most is that you wouldn’t realize the difference, that he worked the
pattern fabric so well into the background; it became a part of painting.
Finally the way he used polka dots mimicking commercial prints of post war era
is inspiring. They have a unique aesthetic quality and beauty.
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| Sigmar Polke: Alice in Wonderland 1972 |
One can lost in the research. I surely enjoyed the visual feast and the challenging approaches the artists portrayed. Next task it to start developing my ideas and design.
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