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Maria Cohen
15.03.21 - 21.03.21
Day 1
The first day of my residency I would like to focus on narrative of my practice about, why I am doing this and why it might be interesting and inspiring for anyone else.
This week I am going to talk about sexuality, frustration and fears as a sustainable part of contemporary life. My practice is built on basis of complicated relationship to feminism because I recognise the importance of that politics for my identity as a woman to be free to explore my sexuality in my artwork is itself the function of legacy. I am primarily working with controversial aspects: logical, intellectual approach of life in contrast to impulsive, emotive, passionate character of me. I am interested in capturing moments of physical vibration, shaking and fluctuations from every day life. My main objective to talk about sexuality from the side of a powerful energy which on a total aspects of life such as political, personal, identical and so on.
I am going to share the process of my research which I am working with such as a studio practice, notes and sketches in a diary, tools and bibliography which I use for deeper exploration the main idea.
I started experiencing with filming myself. I used it previously but I've never considered it as a part of my practice as a sort of performative act. It was really embarrassing to show myself on public but at the same time it was not actually about me. Basically, I used myself as a tool for exploration the bounderies of my body. Also, it is a way of awareness of sexuality and how it works in both real and digital life. This is a performative way talking about real beauty, spontaneous, mistakes, fears, shyness, emotions.
Yoga like a symbol of control over emotions, fuzziness effect allows to understand that harmony and balance are always violated by external factors, although will does not allow to give up.
Day 2
Today I feel myself as a pilot or a bird or an equilibrist who balances between a total of mess in contemporary life and a level of consciousness in a taking decisions and personal choices. We all today feel responsibility for our choices because an impact after making a decision is always considerable for a multiple in diverse aspects of life.
"Matter thus offers an infinitely porous, spongy, or cavernous texture without emptiness, caverns endlessly contained in other caverns: no matter how small, each body contains a world pierced with irregular passages, surrounded and penetrated by an increasingly vaporous fluid, the totality of the universe resembling a “pond of matter in which there exist different flows and waves.”
Multiple is a matter full of porous, spongy and cavernous texture. Caverns endlessly contained in other caverns
I hung sketches on the walls, put them on the floor. From time to time I mix them together or stick them one to another then change there positions. In the centre pop a black and white collage I hung the drawing of a naked woman who is sitting on a chair. The figure looks knackered, overwhelmed and exhausted, allthough, it seems that she feels comfortable to be naked probably it because this condition quite natural and ordinary for her so that might symbolise confidence, independence and freedom.
A symbol or a metaphorical image means a lot in my practice. I capture inspiration and ideas from everyday life. Later, I sort them out from dozen photographs, notes, sketches, books or videos. Usually, I do things unconsciously it is a kind of allowing your passionate, animal nature to lead you up which gives pretty interesting unexpected result. An image of a rabbit appeared in my practice also subconsciously like an impulsive reaction on the event when I was in Russia. For a second I felt myself as a rabbit who was locked in a cell without right to choose.
Hares are often associated with birth and resurrection. They are born, live and die within a short time, in line with the seasons, making them an ideal visual nod to the theme of mortality in art.
Their rapid breading rate also implies fertility and sensuality, yet as a prey animal, rabbits simultaneously indicate innocence and love.
In Judaism rabbits as a symbol of the Diaspora.
Diaspora for me it's a kind of necessity belonging to a cultural group, a tribe, a family or religion like a solid social chain which gives a feeling of stability and illusory (assumptive) order. Also, Diaspora may impacts on a upbringing of a man forming his identity through the religious, social aspect, values and so on. It forms everything patterns of behaviour, habits and attachment to traditions.
Day 3
I am so confused tonight how to start my writing therefore, I will continue to speculate about power, sexual power and what the erotic is and how I understand and feel this as a woman so that what kind of tools and metaphorical images I use for expression this topic through my practice. I was really hooked by a book of Audre Lorde " The Erotic As Power" . I find that this essay is very accurate for expressing my own feelings and personal experience about sex and women's sexuality and why this question has such controversial context and meaning.
"THERE ARE MANY kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling."
"In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power."
Day 4
I always try to capture a moment of a physical vibration, shaking and fluctuations which such typical for frustration or affectation. I watch it everywhere around wildlife and inanimate things. I catch myself on a thought that I usually deeply feel the engagement among array of things and myself. It is a sort of the deepest connection with the whole body and things around. Indeed, when you can feel and touch the essence of things. In Baroque that looks like training twists and turning its folds, pushing them to infinity, fold over fold, one upon the other. In my practice I use layers as Baroque's folds like a symbolic attitude to constantly changing events from the routine life.
It is a kind of meditation or trance when every controversial parts of me merge and lead my hand and eye on a different perspective of view. In every day life I call it as break for a minute for listening a beat of heart, to feel physically that you have skin or bones, to see buffeting of trees and bushes, to see the connection and strongest sexual energy of things around like mannequins in a shop window, or strongest disgusting smell from mix of places at one tiny place.
Day 5
The last few days I am going to talk about cells. Why I use this and how it correlates with a topics of sex, sexuality and fears through my practice. Also, how hares relate with a cages either and which part of my identity feels like a rabbit in the cell and why it also connects with sexual energy and a feeling of oppression.
For me cells is not the same as a cage it is more about an asylum where you can feel secure. Although, security might be very deceptive in fact that a man always tends hiding from reality, inner voice or intuition therefore, avoiding fears and stress, often make decision for the benefit of a logical and ethical aspect. On the other hand, the cell can be a security place for itself as same as a human body can be considered as a chamber of secrets.
Interesting, that the cage might have variety of reverse meanings such as feelings of fragility, defencelessness, loneliness or isolation, although, in parallel it can be the place for meditation, reflections oneself through deeper focusing at array of practice such as learning, creation, silence, listening, exploration and so on.
Day 6
"Each cell deals with a fear . Fear is pain... each cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at."
Louise Bourgeois
Day 7
At the end of my residency I decided to overall all my experiences with using lots of media and as I said earlier the explaination the relation among them. Basically, being mentally in the cell is a condition of a lack of choice. Sometimes its a personal choice to be in shortage of something although it always a result of social aspects such as nurturing, culture, religious, education and so on. Although, also it might be oppression from a government, diaspora which pressure and disorientated desire and passionate willingness to use sexual energy for creation and love. In my drawing I use diverse narrative which I usually take from news or events which are strongly affected me. At the moment of creativity I do not think about material or particular image literally it comes unconsciously like seeing a dream. I use watercolour as a based paint because the combination with liquid diluted ink gives unpredictable effect of brightness which is literally like light in Catholic Churches from windows and stained glasses.
Camberwell
MA Painting
Project Space
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