Feeling positively charged after a positively constructive conversation with Betty and Felicity. My main worry starting the meeting was that I had loads of things on the go, started, in the middle, unfinished, that had nothing to do with one another. A list of things in my studio included:
- two unfinished oil paintings centered around the forced invisibility of Afghan women and painting in red as an angry, desperate plea to not ignore the deterioration of their situation
- a portpartum body parts focused pink draped lace lamp, with multiple folds of fabric representing inverted nipple issues with feeding, incorrectly stitched birth tears and sagging wrinkled belly skin
- a lace maquette of pregnant female torso turned into a tent, with door frames in front of the entrance and synthetic hair acting as fiberoptic wires draped, leading from the foor frames to the female womb tent, commenting on the destructive consequences war in Ukraine has on nature and a question: once the power hungry have destroyed the world with wars, and killed millions of innocent people and destructed many animal species, who do they turn to expecting the populations to be rebuilt? Females, wombs, mother earth, virgin Mary, the life giving ones.
- I also have some experimental small pieces: tree mushrooms dipped in resin that when dried resemble amber, the magical healing stone very typical by polish Baltic sea, used to make jewellery, used to make bracelets and necklaces for teething children to ease the pain. Likewise mushrooms, thinking about both their healing powers as well as the fact they’re considered pests that feed off the sick and dyig trees, sucking out their remaining resources
Betty had an interesting point in relation to my dilemma of my mixed feelings about combining my concern for nature and my angry need to negotiate visibility of mother artists within artistic institutions and the need to resist marginalisation of women in extremist societies. We discussed me feeling that a lot of art related to caring for nature is very beige, hs to use neutral colours and the artist “brand” seems to be hippie, yoga loving, spiritual being surrounded with crystals and feathers. Betty wondered I could use the red I am so obsessed with using in my paintings and try to approach human relationship with nature and dependance on it, which we continuously ignore, how the red rather than beige could be an element of my commentary and simultaneously the combination of mothers bodily experience, womb, mother-earth, healing powers, magic, how all that could be used together. Betty also recommended readinkg the book Magick and I remembered the book on polish pagan rituals against evil I might start reading once the paper is submitted.
Felicity had a great point about potentially combining the willow and lace structures with the mushrooms somehow, don’t know how yet but might experiment with that.
Betty basically said: you have enough for an entire exhibition, maybe stop making now and focus on how you might put it all together, chill out, play, have fun, find connections, as everything you’re talking about doesn’t seem like disconnected bits of chaos, it all relates to the same subject of female energy, struggle, magic in the everyday rituals, the human connection with nature and gradual loos of it. What Felicity mentioned about humans also just being animals but somehow forgetting about it, made me think of us always thinking we’re superior, more important, how nature is therefore less important and doesn’t require our time and devotion, how we never have time to care for it. I think about nature every time I throuw away food or need to recycle something, but I forget about it when using technology.
Need to remember: ask Betty about the fabric glue I could use to stiffen the lace
Collaboration: ask Alex and Keely if they might be interested in collaborating.