It is safe to say that I would rather put something out in the world with the potential to fall flat on its face, than play it safe, and so I make myself vulnerable necessarily. There is a particular lens that my work is often seen through (crazy-logic) and I offer an alternative.
Indeed my work is often autobiographical, made from the herstories my body tells. As a female artist, can I also be afforded a socio-politcal point of view that is both local and global? There are many instances in my work(s) where community is gathered not around the kitchen table but around a different platform. Yet, there is a sense I have of being relegated (as unruly females often are - think Wolfian) back inside the house as soon as I crack open the door.
Then there is the issue of meaning. Sometimes I say it out loud...as in WOW where I use a microphone to state, “You can't take it with you and love is all there is”. Dancing is the genius of encryption. One makes meaning or not according to one's own capacity for sitting with the discomfort of not knowing. Can we be less comfortable knowing?
And ever since Aristotle made the case that what distinguishes men from women and children, is the essentially masculine ability to use reason to control emotions, we have subscribed to the notion that thinking is "good" and feeling is "bad". Descartes declared, "I think, therefore I am" further elevating the wisdom of the head above the heart.
Art criticism is deeply entrenched in this patriarchal standard. One is required to "make sense" of things on behalf of...who...exactly? I think that a woman (or a man?) who displays too much emotion must of course be deemed mad.
I am the specter of the mad-woman writhing and groaning, calling out from the time she lives in, and others die in, for the sake of love. How crazy is that? I made overtly emotional dances, and I remain moved by so many who watched and sobbed. Wow. I mean, Pow.
Resisting/Not Resisting