Embodied-entanglements/entangled-embodiments performative encounters with materials, creative process and the artist-woman’s body
Date
2022
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Abstract
My creative research is actiVaTed by the enTANgled intersection of weaving and painting practices, corporeal feminisms and new materialisms. My research and making process seek to unseTTle, destabiliSe and disown existing knowledge – by LEArning to unLEArn, de-disciplining genres and destabiliSing gendered expectations.
I de-discipline the Western genre of painting through introducing weaving as a form of painting – REclaiming painting as a feminist material practice that uses objects and colours to make paint-like marks in three-dimensional space. Long stigmatised and belittled as ‘women’s work’, I instead celeBRAte weaving as a proudly feminine mode of creative making in which iterative creative practices are regenerative and “re-member” space through the body, creating belonging and identification.
The gestures of my sedimeNTed body and enTANgled life experiences are imprinted as autographic traces into the inteNSe encrusted-enTANgled forms I make, which I call eXe, or enTANgled-embodiments/embodied enTANglements. My selfhood gets made-unmade-remade in their making. Through my actiVities that make-unmake-LEArn-unLEArn-disrupT arrange-rearrange, I challenge expectations and gendered impositions placed on me from the multiplE life roles I take on, as well as flattened representations and identity markers. My research process is a return to forms of knowledge produced from and by the body. The viewer experiences (rather than simply sees) eXe as an emotive or auratic visceral bodily encounter, and through them, becomes immeRSed in a perforMance of intenSE creative labour and sedimeNTed life experiences.
Description
A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Arts to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2022
Keywords
Performative encounters, Artist-woman body, Creative process, Artist-woman, Entangling, Embodiment, Painting