My box celebrates the beauty of women. The jewelry box, a classic symbol of femininity, is elegant and beautiful as is the women rising out of it. She is transparent as air and looking at her, you see your beautiful self reflected in the mirror. A universal woman, she is not confined to the box, but rising out of it. She and the mirror remind us that no matter who we are, our age, race, color, size, economic standing or physical ability, we are all beautiful.
Category: Beauty
Pride of the Womb
Forging ahead in the women’s movement does not mean women fighting against their unique physical inheritance. It means uplifting themselves into more exalted positions as women.
Pandora’s Bomb
Pandora a Broken Myth
In doing this box I decided to see what the original myth of Pandora was. I was struck with the beauty and the imagery of Hesiod. I laughed at the obvious fear and envy that men have had at the creative female. I felt we could look at this myth and break it open and show women in all her creative force without fear or envy.
“as a favor to Zeus the father,
On this had been done much intricate work,
a wonder to look at:
wild animals, such as the mainland
and the sea also produce
in numbers, and he put many on,
the imitations of living
things that have voices, wonderful,
and it flashed in its beauty.
But when, to replace good,
he made this beautiful evil
thing, he led her out
where the rest of the gods and mortals
were, in the pride and glory
that the gray-eyed daughter of a great
father had given; wonder seized both immortals and mortals
as they gazed on this sheer deception.”
Hesiod translated by Richmond Lattimore
Mosaic
This box represents the beautiful mosaic of children in the United States. The girl holding the flag is my niece who was recently adopted from an orphanage in China and became a U.S. citizen.
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Kiss
In the Garden
Peace Offering
Peace Offering is about seeing the angelic possibilities in our existence on the Earth, despite all adversity. It is so easy to forget that goodness is as real as horror when we are in the midst of difficulties. I hope that my offering to the Women Beyond Borders project will serve as a beacon to remind us of the beauty and light that is always within our reach.
Skin Deep
Spilling out of a Pandora’s box, previously concealed truths reveal themselves. A hand, a living experience and the intuition it contains, is full of signification. This can be translated in a multiplicity of paradoxical ways.
Beauty is a socioeconomic and political construction. How we depict women in art opens up a dialogue and an opportunity to affect our inter-relationships. We are not alone in deriving pleasure from the spectacle. Manet’s Olympia, and the official ideology she implies, returns our gaze.
Revelation
“To laugh often
and much, to win
the respect of
intelligent people
and the affection
of children, to earn
the appreciation
of honest critics
and endure the
betrayal of false
friends, to
appreciate beauty,
to find the best
in others,
to leave the world
a bit better, whether
by a healthy child,
a garden patch…
to know even one
life has breathed
easier because
you have lived.
This is to have
succeeded!”
-Emerson
Our House, Our Home
I am sure that you would be attracted by the beautiful landscape of the Vietnamese countryside. The lush, expansive fields spread wide and the rivers flow gently into the silent sunset.
There is one thing that is so much a part of our lives…the thatch-roofed cottage. No matter where we live, we conjure up images of our cottages when we get homesick. They are remnants left behind by our ancestors from a long time ago. They are features of natural beauty of the Vietnamese countryside. Do you know that although they are made of simple, natural materials such as different types of bamboo and palm leaves, they have covered us during rainy and sunny seasons. Some of the houses are built on stilts to protect us against floods and the attack of the wild animals in the night.
Seeing is believing, so we hope that you will come to my country, if only once to see the cottages. You will love them as we do.
The Vessel of Light
The vessel of Light is a woman laid bare,
she is a city on a hill and a lamp on a stand
See her light from within and praise her creator.
The vessel of Light is a soul pure and true,
Her charm is not fleeting and her beauty never fades
For they come from the fear of the Lord.
The vessel of Light is scorned by the world,
For her beauty is not outward and she does not seduce
And the darkness on earth cannot understand the light.
The vessel of Light is set apart in the world,
In the darkness of the night, she shines like the sun
For she lives not for pleasures of man.
The vessel of Light will live on forever,
With others much like her too,
The song she sings to the world from the Lord
Is as much as for her as for you.
Her light never fades, and her joyous song never dies
For what is physical will pass away,
But what comes from within, shines eternally
From her Salvation, she’ll never stray.
If you see her Light, please don’t turn away
The glory is not hers she says,
It comes from her salvation in The Light of the world,
And it could be yours too today.
Women's Voices: Faye Shen, Singapore from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.
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Make Up
The title, Make Up, is chosen as it refers not only to the cosmetics we women apply on our faces, but also to other connotations–to fabricate, to supplement, to collect, to put together, to parcel, to put into shape, and to arrange–all of which formed part of the process in its making. Make Up looks at the notion of wholeness with reference to the obsession in women to be or to be seen as psychologically and physically sufficient. The mirror on the top of the box reflects the viewer’s face, thus engaging/making him/her as a subject. Hence, the artwork questions a woman’s need and her behavior in wanting to “fit in” through the act of supplementing her appearance with cosmetics. Is the woman’s quest to Make Up her complete self destined to fail?
The Ideal Women
The work challenges the notion of an ideal woman and our perception of a perfect appearance. The Ideal Woman exists today in various forms. The construction of the ideal woman is constantly propagated by the media, mass culture and social standards. Reconstruction with corrective surgery, Cyber-heroines modeled in the realm of virtual reality, Plastic dolls with envious 38″-18″-34″ dimensions are but just a few examples of what influences our conscious psyche.
The box presents a metal pedestal upon which women fixate the psychological image of an ideal woman. The proliferation of body types littering the box illustrates the quest to attain the ideal image through various stages of her life. The doll parodies a woman’s fixation with her own body and her quest to find the perfect body. Swathed in slim-wrap, draped with a tape measure, the woman is never satisfied and the craving for the image of the ideal woman never stops.
So, pause! What / who / where is the Ideal Woman? A fiction of our imagination, mostly.
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The Earth moves me
The branches protect me
And her beauty fills my soul
Endless Beauty
My work deals with the femininity of a woman, as she struggles not only to be part of society’s work force, but also to maintain her appearance as changes are brought about through aging. Instead of the small wooden box, I have cast a larger box from wax, not only to enhance its appearance but also to give that sense of being alive. The box itself is wrapped up with skin and it is this same skin that are stacked inside the box in repetitive folds. The wrapped box together with the folded repetitive skin represents the struggles of a modern woman in the community, to which she has, to balance between society and the family, and yet maintain her >endless beauty for society.
Tight Fit
This piece of work explores the notion of restriction and objectification by juxtaposing an old-time practice of foot binding with fashionable high heeled shoes. Pain, in both historical and contemporary context, is symbolized by the shrouded shoe. Times may have changed, but certain perceptions of women remain deeply entrenched. In the past, women were obliged to have their feet bound in order to be considered beautiful and desirable by men. Having small feet was a symbol of stature and gentility. Hence, women’s feet were forcibly bound to fit into dainty, three-inch long shoes. Today, women subject themselves to the pain and discomfort of three-inch (or more!) high shoes to enhance their feminine appeal. Yet, hidden behind the glossy look is this sense of inadequacy and the desire to be looked at. Are we now considered willing participants of a game of restrictive beauty, to the point of disregarding the possible hazards by wearing heels?
Caged Wildlife
My box has to do with the exploitation by containment or denial of the wild splendor of nature and of woman.
The Color of Life
We never know that our color of life is so rich and various.
You should feel it and live with them.
If you don’t feel it you would be lost.
Like many Mongols, she is longing for
flowers, since there are no flowers in Mongolia.
-Vesna Wallace, Religious Studies – UCSB
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This box of boundaries and borders of seams and skin-colored patterns uses the images produced to explore the possibilities of connection. By using these borders between colors of skin as a connection instead of a boundary of separation, it creates a quilt-like or map-like pattern. The connection of the visual image similar to a map and the intellectual understanding of different ethnicities throughout the world attempts to introduce the possibility of these coming together beautifully without attempting uniformity.
This cloth covering, this skin is also superficial. This cloth is synthetic and covers the box almost completely, except for one run in the stocking and one square wall inside the box. These show the natural wood underneath this cloth skin, the same wood each woman began her box with.
The images produced from this quilting of panty-hose is almost primitive and yet the material is a symbol of progressive, fashionable women. The appearance of smooth, uniformly colored legs has been considered beautiful in Western Europe and America for some time now. This aspect introduces the difference in perspectives of beauty.
Sewing with my hair weaved in the traditional concept of long hair as beautiful and feminine. This image of women’s long hair is in many regions and reminds me of the many places I find hair I have shed, in the bed, in the shower, on my clothes, on the floor. Historically in some areas women used to sew with horse hair. The concept of women’s hair connecting many regions twists the projection of beauty into a powerful relationship where the object that was used as a thing to look at, now fulfills the position of bridging the boundaries, of connecting the borders.
The process of sewing this box reminded me of the women throughout the world who sew for their families and communities. They create to keep people clothed and warm. The process is time consuming and requires patience and care. The needles remain hanging from the box by hair and thread because we are still in the process of sewing our borders and recognizing our differences and using these to create a new understanding, a new connection of women artists around the world.
Garden Carriage
Children Beyond Borders. VSA Arts.
Age 10.
The box reflects me because it’s quiet, pretty, and full of flowers.
Hidden Beauty
Real beauty is hidden and then found like a box of treasures. These textiles represent women from different regions of my country. A heritage that should be preserved for our children.
The words on the box are prayers: to make good choices; be a better person – humble, patient and thankful.
Nostalgia Box
I.T. Image Trap
I.T. Image Trap is derived from visual images of women. Women tend to be regarded more as ‘ornaments’ than the opposite gender and this resulted in a human condition where attention is focused on physical attributes than on what lies beneath. I.T. Image Trap has an ornamental quality and it possesses as the ability to deter from being simply regarded as ‘surface beauty’ which could be replaced or be out of fashion. It aspires to be considered as a work with endless possibilities, meanings and pleasant surprises. Just like any sensible woman who wants to be looked upon, I.T. Image Trap teases one to unmask the trapped image within.