In exploring how my work relates with categories for debating the body in contemporary art I will examine: 1) performance art; 2) minimalism; 3) aesthetics; 4) post-structuralist rendering of the disciplined body; 5) abject art; 6) aesthetic enactment of the disappearing, vanishing body; and 7) the Cyborg. My work may fit into a few of these considerations because manipulating clay is very physical and tactile. I relate my creations to myself, and therefore my body, because I am depicting how I differ in form, from the shapes around me.
I suppose I could stretch my imagination to relate clay art to performance art. A certain amount of my physical action is required to pound the clay into the correct smoothness to create with. Beating and mashing the clay repeatedly is a way to show how I generate outcomes. My presence is manifest through these actions.
Minimalism is in my work when I use a non-representational form like a ceramic spiral to represent myself. The viewer must come up with their own consideration about what this form means. A body without a familiar form requires contemplation and cannot be categorized. I can manipulate negative space and cause the viewer to think about my absence as well as my presence. The spiral might mean I continue indefinitely or it may mean I am waiting to be resurrected. It could also mean I am stuck in an infinite cycle.
Clay is always a very aesthetic presence. People want to touch it and seek out the tactile shapes in their perfection or imperfection. I incorporate textures into my work to invite viewers to touch them. To feel clay the viewer must feel the earth and their mortality, because we all serve the earth, even as compost. To think of clay you will eventually come to realize you will return to it someday. And so, then, in every one of my clay artworks is a tiny bit of our history, our humanity. Bringing clay to forms of artwork is bringing people back to life, in a new form, and incorporating the fragmented bodies of others. Clay is how we all embrace death and then become immortal.
I often think of the aesthetic enactment of the disappearing, vanishing body by deconstructing rules of gender. I like to make goddess figures that remind me of female power. My spiral shapes also relate to the feminist notions of modern day goddess worshipers by embodying the spiral dance of life. I give women the same (if not greater) power as men and perpetuate female empowerment by allowing my spirals to interrupt the patterns and oppressive molds of society. I increase female power by increasing the size and displacement caused by my spiral shapes.
I’m pretty sure I don’t use abject art models in my work. I don’t like and purposely avoid images of the body that are revolting and disgusting. The closest I can come to relating to this type of work is the occasional passing thought that an extrusion of clay resembles a turd. I quickly remedy this and move on.
When people look at my artwork and don’t understand or care to contemplate it they are treating it like the enactment of the vanishing body. It is painful to be invisible, so I craft my pieces to have as much impact as possible. Yet there will always be those who don’t give a damn about it. I suppose if I wanted to embrace the concept and enact the vanishing body I could leave clay in an untouched heap so it would be as unimportant as the dirt that it is. I’m sure many people would walk by and not even contemplate the value of a lump of earth, or distain my work as meaningless. If they only thought about it, that earth is the body, immortalized.
Last, in considering the Cyborg, or expanded humanity, we have to consider that clay, being minerals, can withstand the rigors of space and is the ultimate vehicle of our immortality. No one remains an individual once they return to the earth. Every particle of us is eventually transformed back into clay. Minerals are the foundation for our modern technology and are the building blocks for computers and artificial body parts. In that way we all return from clay to functioning parts of humanity again without ever having a biological rebirth. So my clay creations are immobile cyborgs waiting to be recast into new humanity.
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