Consumer Whores
Statement
This project can be installed in a number of ways, each formation lending itself to a different play on the physical art canon that is the modernist square. From Malevich's Black Square, to Cubism, to formalist monochromes, to Carl Andre's Magnesium-Zinc Plains, to Chuck Close's topographic portraits - the square, the cube, and the grid are bound to the traditions of 'masculine' art. I am concerned with how I can use the canonized male-dominated art objects that have been integrated and recontextualized by mainstream culture; as a female artist I aim to push the ongoing dialogue between what is feminine and masculine.
The short, sexually and emotionally driven text that centers these t-shirts are an unintentional referent to the modernist and post-modern conceptual artists like Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer, and Steven Shearer who based their practices around the use of text.
This piece constitutes a complex narrative in a post-structuralist discourse on the history of modernist art and the gendered socio-economic pressures that effect young women in a western neo-capitalist region. Individually, each block of text stretched on the canvas can be read on a denotative level. When thinking about these words on t-shirts being sold to females, a different set of social signifiers are automatically employed.
If the shirt is viewed as distasteful, the viewer will think, "What type of girl wears that sort of thing?" This leads to gender stereotyping that the media has circulated ad infinitum into our culture. However, if the shirt is viewed as bold and worn as an ironic statement against the status quo, the reading of it changes. Interpretation of this piece is always shifting, dependent on its presentation, location, and audience.
This project also reveals much about my own views on the politics of desire, gender, and social constructs of body image. By hiding the seams, sleeves, collars, and by unifying their physical dimensions, I have undeniably altered the true nature of these shirts. As these t-shirts are more about the maker and the gazer instead of the wearer, they are not meant to reflect a broad spectrum of real women, but a specific type of fictitious women already existent in our consciousness. This adds the issue of authorship and appropriation; at what point do I stop collecting and make a conscious decision in presentation that may affect the raw, readymade material?
Statement
This project can be installed in a number of ways, each formation lending itself to a different play on the physical art canon that is the modernist square. From Malevich's Black Square, to Cubism, to formalist monochromes, to Carl Andre's Magnesium-Zinc Plains, to Chuck Close's topographic portraits - the square, the cube, and the grid are bound to the traditions of 'masculine' art. I am concerned with how I can use the canonized male-dominated art objects that have been integrated and recontextualized by mainstream culture; as a female artist I aim to push the ongoing dialogue between what is feminine and masculine.
The short, sexually and emotionally driven text that centers these t-shirts are an unintentional referent to the modernist and post-modern conceptual artists like Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer, and Steven Shearer who based their practices around the use of text.
This piece constitutes a complex narrative in a post-structuralist discourse on the history of modernist art and the gendered socio-economic pressures that effect young women in a western neo-capitalist region. Individually, each block of text stretched on the canvas can be read on a denotative level. When thinking about these words on t-shirts being sold to females, a different set of social signifiers are automatically employed.
If the shirt is viewed as distasteful, the viewer will think, "What type of girl wears that sort of thing?" This leads to gender stereotyping that the media has circulated ad infinitum into our culture. However, if the shirt is viewed as bold and worn as an ironic statement against the status quo, the reading of it changes. Interpretation of this piece is always shifting, dependent on its presentation, location, and audience.
This project also reveals much about my own views on the politics of desire, gender, and social constructs of body image. By hiding the seams, sleeves, collars, and by unifying their physical dimensions, I have undeniably altered the true nature of these shirts. As these t-shirts are more about the maker and the gazer instead of the wearer, they are not meant to reflect a broad spectrum of real women, but a specific type of fictitious women already existent in our consciousness. This adds the issue of authorship and appropriation; at what point do I stop collecting and make a conscious decision in presentation that may affect the raw, readymade material?