RMB Manifesta
In my work as a photographer, performer, and cultural
theorist, I mash-up familiar icons and personae, disorienting myself from a
conventional experience with them as a passive consumer. Engaging the
visual language of mass media, I create timeless, placeless stages, leaving
only the represented body and the constructed image to reconfigure signifiers
of authenticity.
Through still lifes of books, album covers, and other
mass-produced objects, I excavate links to the narratives of those who
attempted to subvert oppressive paradigms, only to be reabsorbed back into them.
These narratives are vital to creating my own mythology, not suffering through
trends of cultural consumption but fostering an oppositional gaze. With each
meticulously displayed gesture, I ritualize my privilege to work this way.
Following this same focus in my performance and video work,
I embody what I call a “contemporary freemason,” a culturally syncretic
trickster who possesses skill in repurposing symbolic meaning. Depicting
multiple roles of jester, servant, master, and creator, the self-portraits and
performances intentionally reassign modes of representation as sites of
resistance and choice.
By exploring the overlap between the performed and the
personal, I attempt to recover a sense of agency in my own representation. No
longer the subaltern or the abject, the intact black female body dominates as
the vehicle through which the possibilities of self-determination and
multi-consciousness manifest. The dilemma of double-consciousness will be damned.
Your statement is very well put together. I can imagine the work from your description and you've made your intentions clear. I love the use of the word "trickster" along with "jester, servant, master, and creator". It lightens up some of the heavy content that exists in the ideas of your work and gets at some of the humorous aspects without undermining the serious side. But for some reason, I keep getting stuck on the word "privilege". What do you mean by your privilege to work this way?
ReplyDeleteFor me, the first sentence seems loaded, and maybe could benefit from a break down. It gets a little confusing as I begin to acquaint myself with your method and concepts. I like the idea of "disorienting" yourself in relation to your work. I haven't heard that in any of your critiques, but I think it opens your work up for me. This may be a bit embarrassing for me to admit, but I have a hard time accessing your work even though I really want to. Knowing that not even you have completely figured it out is nice to hear. Through stating that you disorient even yourself, in fact, says that you are purposely turning your ideas around from the norm, relating more to the viewer in a way of confusion that I'm drawn to.
ReplyDeleteOther things I'm attracted to in this statement:
1) "placeless stages", I love the word choice specifically the imagery (or non-imagery) it evokes. It's a tricky in-between kind of definition of something that is supposed to exist visually.
2) The idea of the gaze in relation to your own mythology. I'm not sure why, but there's something about that statement that is intriguing. Maybe it's because I'm fascinated by the gaze (which tends to take on masculine roles) in relation to you as a black female, proving that you don't need others to express your own beliefs.
3) The idea of you as "trickster"
Maybe elaborating more on the humor that you want to creep in through digestion of your imagery. I was surprised to hear in your crit that you wanted humor to come through, since your imagery seems so serious to me. Maybe addressing that more in a statement would help me reach that point without feeling guilty about it.
rashayla, this statement makes me like your work more, which means it's well on its way!
ReplyDeletedisorienting can be replaced with a stronger, more generative word? also, your work talks not only to mass media but to other black contemporary artists, you would do well to differentiate what you're doing, establish a terrain/approach that is critically needed/not being met by others?
In my work as a photographer, performer, and cultural theorist, I mash-up familiar icons and personae, disorienting myself from a conventional experience with them as a passive consumer. Engaging the visual language of mass media, I create timeless, placeless stages, leaving only the represented body and the constructed image to reconfigure signifiers of authenticity.
can you explain ritualize my privilege?
Through still lifes of books, album covers, and other mass-produced objects, I excavate links to the narratives of those who attempted to subvert oppressive paradigms, only to be reabsorbed back into them. These narratives are vital to creating my own mythology, not suffering through trends of cultural consumption but fostering an oppositional gaze. With each meticulously displayed gesture, I ritualize my privilege to work this way.
Following this same focus in my performance and video work, I embody what I call a “contemporary freemason,” a culturally syncretic trickster who possesses skill in repurposing symbolic meaning. Depicting multiple roles of jester, servant, master, and creator, the self-portraits and performances intentionally reassign modes of representation as sites of resistance and choice.
By exploring the overlap between the performed and the personal, I attempt to recover a sense of agency in my own representation. No longer the subaltern or the abject, the intact black female body dominates as the vehicle through which the possibilities of self-determination and multi-consciousness manifest. The dilemma of double-consciousness will be damned.
strong ending, i want to hear it in other words before completely signing off on it.
great effort R!
To clear up one thing first... since this is labeled as a manifesta, I'm assuming that each paragraph is sort of one separate point? Each paragraph has a strong rhetoric that begins, develops, and concludes very clearly. It's like reading four really good essay abstracts. But there also seems to be a strong movement across the four sections. The first two lean towards academic concepts such as signification, territorialization/deterritorialization, the gaze, the mythology. And then we see this move into your own creation of the "contemporary freemason" through those ideas as well as the statement of a strongly voiced personal goal of reclaiming agency. My one suggestion would be to round out the whole piece into five points by adding one more at the end about your personal interaction with your work. To me these second two points are the most interesting and I'm left at the end kind of wanting one more.
ReplyDelete