Due to my limited studio space I have been forced to work smaller and more conservatively. Perhaps the smaller scale will lend itself to the story telling/lived experience part of the project? Several pieces that tell a story.
Grayson Perry’s Vanity of Small Differences consists of several tapestries that follow a character – Tim Rakewell. The stages of his life are depicted by still moments in time, and the viewer understands this story by putting these singular moments into a continuum.
These reminds me of the film Lady Bird, where the story is established by allowing the viewer to see select vulnerable and intimate moments of Lady Bird’s life. Singular, mundane, exposed moments set in stone through recording it. It’s like flipping through a family photo album.
An important part of understanding eating disorders is understanding control and impulsivity. Often what feels most poignant is the lack of control that people suffer with, and thus turn to body and food in order to have authority over something. Action painters who allow the gesture of the movement to dictate what appears on the surface represent a form of letting go.
Willem De Kooning
Jackson Pollock
Franz Kline
The establishment between the relationship between femininity and eating disorders leads me on to think about the vulnerability of Tracey Emin’s My Bed. It is freeing because it is ugly, and represents the female existence behind closed doors, despite presenting in a socially acceptable manner.
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Femininity is intrinsic to fertility, and is investigated in Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois’ collaboration Do Not Abandon Me.
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