Research Thesis
The type of art I have been working on is is sculptural and installation art involving my use of my own body to create to create narratives of past memories and experiences. The materials I have further explored to construct my work include plaster, plaster bandages, paper-mache, and wood. I create plaster molds by wrapping parts of my body in the material, cutting myself out, and then connecting the limbs together. I cover my molds in regular plaster to make a more solid form. In the previous semester my concentration for this term was to create a piece that used my body to create a large textured form that conveys s sense of emotion. In the following semester I have further developed my concept. Finding it to be an important element to incorporate myself into the creation of the work, it only seemed fitting to involve my own personal experiences into the concepts of the work. I wanted to play with space and create an environment for these memories to flow. I had already developed upon the style for my work in the first semester and decided to build and further develop my ideas onto it.
For research I studied the work of a number of artists that do work involving the body. Looking at how other artist have used the body within their art to understand why other artists find it important to use body forms within their work. The work I studied were by the artists: Henry Moore, Tim Hawkinson, Hans Breder, Rachel Whiteread, Marlene Dumas, Clara Lieu, Nausheen Saeed, Peter Jansen, Paul Mccarthy, Kiki Smith, Diana Al-Hadid, Kooang Choi, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Thomas Shutte, and Ted Lawson. The artists that inspired me the most or that I felt related to my own work are: Antony Gormley, David Altmejd, and Fanny Alloing.
When studying the work done by David Altmejd, I found that he also uses plaster to create molds of parts of his own body, but done in away that he plays with the material instead of having a mapped out plan of what it is he’s going to create. Altmejd creates his work by trusting how the material works, were he creates a piece just by working with the material (Art21.) This is how I came up with my starting piece. I started by making a plaster mold and then plastered my hands several times and just started placing hands until this image of what the piece would turn into developed. After much thought of what I wanted to explore, fully knowing the turmoils I was trying to project in my first piece done in first semester, I explored the turmoils in my own life that I have experienced.
Fanny Alloing is another artist I did research on who also makes plaster body molds. She typically casts dancers and partially covers the figures to show the disappearance of the bodies. Her work reflects death and the life that the plaster skins once belonged to (Alloing, 2010). The aspect of her work that most inspired mine was how she would plaster dancers placed in positions. This was something I tried to incorporate into my own work when figuring out how the bodies would be placed. I wanted positions that seemed fluid and carried a graceful quality. This fluid quality is what I tried to capture by having my figures spill out of the walls of the installation.
Another artist that inspired my work is Antony Gormely, who creates molds of his own body to represent the hollow space within the figure but also the space the figure is placed within. (Gombrich, 10). Gormely’s work got me thinking about my own process of how I construct my figures. Deciding whether or not it was important for my figures to be an image of myself. Before I did not think it mattered so much, however after deciding to plunge into past turmoils of my own life, it made more sense to use my own body rather then another female individual.
My plan was to create body sculptures that were an extension of the architecture and space that it is placed within. My plan was to build an environment for my narration of events dealing with domestic violence. My desires were to I address domestic violence, the fragility of family ties, and the positions of danger women often face within these relationships. The concept for my work involved looking into women’s issues, that I have a direct link to.
Warr, Tracey. “The Artist’s Body”. Phaidon. (2012).
Reckitt, Helena and Peggy Phelan. “Art and Feminisim”. Phaidon. (2001).
Butler, Cornelia. “Wack: Art and the Feminist Revolution”. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art. (2007)
Art21. Boundaries: David Altemjd (2012). <http://www.art21.org/videos/segment-david-altmejd-in-boundaries>
Alloing, Fanny. Presentation (2010).<http://www.fannyalloing.fr/spip.php?rubrique13>
Gombrich, E.H., John Hutchinson, and Lela B Njatin. “Antony Gormely”. London: Phaidon Press Limited, (1995).
Women’ Rights Worldwide. “Working Against the Oppression of Women Around the World” (2007).<http://womensrightsworldwide.org/wrtoday.html>