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: Body Image
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.
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Life Cycle
The leaves will dry up and grow old
The child will grow blood
The aging of the leaves represents the worry women have about growing old, but they are beautiful and they remain beautiful as they change.
Blood is also thought of as negative, but it is within us all- man, too. We have it to remind us of children every month. The hope in the future, despite change, children are precious jewels.
Look at the Mirror
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.
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Self Portrait #2
My work is a personal investigation which began as an attempt to see the body through the photographic medium in ways which are impossible with the naked eye.
I realize that we view images of the body very differently when they are life size or larger. Other objects do not hold such power and are always subject to interpretation of space when confronted by differences in size. The body, although conforming to the same rules of perspective, also holds another set of rules. The body is the common denominator of all the viewers, it is something to relate with on the most personal and intimate basis.
When working in photography it is important to remember that, unfortunately, photography is the choice medium of pornographers. It is a transparent medium; one that is taken of evidence of objective truth with little subjective interdiction. Any picture of a body is not necessarily thought of as a picture of a body, but as a body. We see through the portal of the pictures medium and look at the picture as evidence of truth…or of the body itself. A painting of a body has a different emotional charge than a photograph of the same body. Where a painting of the body would be considered sensual, a photograph of the same body is considered pornographic.
I am dealing with the total involvement of the figure and the role and relationship of the artist and viewer.
Iamthereflectionofyoubutdoyouseetheconfusioninsideofme?
Culver City High School. Grade 11.
Inside of me there is a thin line between depression and happiness. Sometimes I dangle between the two, as if I am suspended on a wire and tied up by my own thoughts. Outside I am the reflection of everyone around me. You look at me and see yourself, see who and what you want to see. Although you look at me forever, you will forever see your own reflection and never penetrate to the inside where I am forever suspended between the two poles of my mind.
Beauty of My Waist
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.
Parcel
My artistic endeavors dwell on questioning the ideal body portrayed by popular culture, by way of designing and making prosthetic garments that allow small people to be what they are not; awkwardly tall, beer-gutted, seat-spillers and generally voluminous. The combination of humor, formal relationships and social commentary are also mixed in most of my site-specific installations.
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?
Emerging Woman
don’t judge me on how I look
don’t assess my usefulness with inverse proportionality to the size of my waist
you will not measure my true worth in inches
don’t use my breasts to see a product that has no connections to my body
if my thighs are large
it’s because I use them to support myself
if my stomach is rounded
it’s because it is full and fertile
my face–my eyes, my smile are not important
I am a woman and therefore beautiful.
The Model and the Box
I pay homage to the naked form. In this piece the artist is absent, but her palette remains. The model is not naked but nude. To be naked is to be deprived of clothes, to be nude carries no uncomfortable overtones. She has no vulnerability. She has energy and vitality. She offers this artist stimulation and creative thought.
I thank the model, the nude…and the box.
Expressions
Clothe your body,
Adorn your soul.
Love oneself like
You would another.
Step out from the shadows
Be unashamed of what you are,
Pull back those curtains
and feel complete…
Self Portrait #1
My work is a personal investigation which began as an attempt to see the body through the photographic medium in ways which are impossible with the naked eye.
I realize that we view images of the body very differently when they are life size or larger. Other objects do not hold such power and are always subject to interpretation of space when confronted by differences in size. The body, although conforming to the same rules of perspective, also holds another set of rules. The body is the common denominator of all the viewers, it is something to relate with on the most personal and intimate basis.
When working in photography it is important to remember that, unfortunately, photography is the choice medium of pornographers. It is a transparent medium; one that is taken of evidence of objective truth with little subjective interdiction. Any picture of a body is not necessarily thought of as a picture of a body, but as a body. We see through the portal of the pictures medium and look at the picture as evidence of truth…or of the body itself. A painting of a body has a different emotional charge than a photograph of the same body. Where a painting of the body would be considered sensual, a photograph of the same body is considered pornographic.
I am dealing with the total involvement of the figure and the role and relationship of the artist and viewer.
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Nostalgia Box
We Are This and That and Everything In Between
Ironically, rather than dealing with the Individual, Western society tends to place us in particular categories (little boxes) and more specifically opposing polarities in order to deal with us more easily, more quickly, less personally.
This easy stereotyping is even more prevalent in regard to the position of women: Madonna/Whore, Mother/Worker, Young/Old, Beautiful/Ugly, Nature/Culture. This box contains references to the stereotyping that we as women experience and the title, We are This and That and Everything in Between, refers to the true individual nature of the female sex.
The Women’s Voices: Diana Robson from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.
The Facade of Glamour
The glamour we see in women is not always representative of her inner self. It is just a facade. This box has all that goes with glamour on its outside, but on the inside it has all the turmoil and agony resulting from her daily chores.
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.