'Healing' Self Portrait Performance
My performance was inspired by Sophie Calle, and her ‘’Dumped by email” series. In my performance you see me take down old letters that have hurt me in the past. These letters held a lot of weight, so taking them down represents healing and moving on. We have all experienced a form of heartbreak, or a feeling of not being enough for today's society. It is important to sit with these feelings, but there is a time when you need to let them go.
After I take down the letters, I replace them with the words “self love.” As a woman in today's society, it is hard to love yourself. There are countless different reasons that can prevent self love such as the male gaze, unrealistic beauty standards and objectification of women. Some women can get caught in how they are “supposed” to act and be, instead of being who they truly are. This can come from fear of going against society's standards, and the male gaze. Bell Hooks once said “As their daughter I was taught that it was my role to serve, to be weak, to be free from the burden of thinking, to caretake and nurture others. My brother was taught that it was his role to be served; to provide; to be strong; to think, strategize, and plan; and to refuse to caretake or nurture others. I was taught that it was not proper for a female to be violent, that it was "Unnatural.” These words prove that women are forced to abide by a certain expectation for the male gaze, while men don't carry any of these burdens. In “The Photographed, Collaged, and Painted Muses of Mickalene Thomas” it states,``Thomas's jazzy photomontages of women’s limbs and facial features can be construed as commentary on how female bodies are brutally picked apart in contemporary visual culture.” In this quote, Carey Dune emphasizes the fact that women's bodys are constantly being picked apart. This type of behavior is more damaging than men realize, and can have long lasting effects on women.
I want my performance to be a reminder to practice self love, so the male gaze and unrealistic beauty standards of society have less of a hold. A performance can hold power because it can express self identity through the message you chose to portray. Whatever has had a hold on you, it can be expressed and let go through the form of a performance. It is important to watch and create performances to get clear on what really matters to you, and how to express it with other people. A performance goes beyond pictures and photographs because you get to see a part of a person you wouldn't have in a still picture or painting. John Berger said in “Ways of Seeing,” “The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.” This is something to always remember, and can inspire us to let go of anything standing in our way.
No comments:
Post a Comment