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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Deconstructed

Six Interconnecting Planes Of Carbon – One Diamond

I wanted to eradicate the borders of the box and create an open field, so I took the lid and four sides off and placed them flat. I then reconnected each rectangle to the other from the back by using black velvet for hinges. Once I had this field of interconnecting planes, I thought about how over time, the possibility lies the hope for the future. I then burned the field of interconnecting planes, turning the wood to carbon. Within the central rectangle (that had been the bottom of the inside of the box). I inlaid a diamond to demonstrate the reality of evolution. The piece is to be either hung or placed flat, IN THE HORIZONTAL CONFIGURATION AND NOT vertically. This is quite intentional to allow for a broader reading than a figurative (totem) placement would permit and is, I believe, visually more consistent with the concept.

Justica

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Julie Su, Esq., LITIGATION DIRECTOR, ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN LEGAL CENTER, RECIPIENT OF THE MACARTHUR GENIUS GRANT and Nancy White, ARTIST

Too often, we fail to think about where the clothes we wear actually come from. Clothes, like this necklace, are worn, but they are also made—made of fabric sewn together by human beings. Women workers are the faces behind the garments we wear, hidden as in this locket, invisible, yet upon closer examination, resilient, strong, able to rise up against exploitation and sweatshop conditions to raise one voice, in many languages, for justice.

 

 

Tomiko Fraser Revealed

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

TOMIKO FRASER, MAYBELLINE SPOKESPERSON/ACTRESS

Tomiko Fraser has benefitted greatly in her life from mentoring and, in return, wishes to nurture and empower other women. An exuberant, playful woman, she has been able to find her way and break free of the confines of others’ expectations.

In appreciation of Faith Ringgold and her painted story quilt “Sunflower Quilting Bee of Arles” (1991) and the women depicted within.

 

Notions of Change

On receiving “the box” I had an overwhelming feeling, that the box somehow needed to be destroyed. But how?

The notion of destruction carries a negative taste in our society. However, the box, as symbol of the way we are forced to live and think, needed to be destroyed. How could I make the act of destruction a positive one? The answer lies in the notion of change. Change is the most constant force active in nature and our lives. The laws of change and transformation are natural laws, more important and fundamental to life on the planet than the laws of constancy and preservation.

To express this I did the following:

I decided to break the box into three parts: lid, main body, and head and foot piece.

The lid I buried in the ground to let it decompose.

The main body I burned until only the charred remains were left.

The head/foot piece I subjected to the physical force of a grater to break it into its smallest visible parts.

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

Untitled

Culver City High School. Grade 11.

My box represents impermanence and fragility, what was once a solid object is now only dust. The silhouette connects this metaphor with human life in that the picture is so fragile that it will scatter with the slightest wind, it is not expected to last forever.

 

Who am I?

As a growing teenager, I often find it hard to determine who I am as an individual. I used the box as an icon of my self-being. I feel as a teenager we often take life for granted and forget how every decision we make is an important one. The stilts on the box are there to exaggerate how important the choices you make in life are. The shattered pieces of glass, directed toward the box, show the constant pressures in life. I chose mirror to show that by just looking in the mirror at yourself you think about who you are. The box is placed upside down to show how I have built my own shelter, apart from my family to protect myself in this world.

Open Box

The box I have created (recreated) is an “open box.” Here the box signifies self-imposed limitations within which we live. Whether in the marriage box, the mother box, the artist box, we notice ourselves playing certain preconceived roles. This becomes inhibiting and sometimes agonizing if we are not aware and perhaps unable to change the rules and roles of the boxes as we grow and change.

I particularly admire people who constantly recreate themselves; who seem unrestricted by society’s boxes. Louise Bourgeois, one of the great sculptors of this century, is one of these people. She looks at things, relationships, her life and her art always with a fresh eye.

One can see Louise Bourgeois in the ceiling of the open box by looking in the mirror. The picture shows her holding a large bronze phallus that she made. The photograph is by Robert Mapplethorpe. Above her is the shell which signifies the soul.

Simulacra

Every little treasure has a message inside…..

SIMULACRA is the title I have chosen for my work in aluminum realized using the original box as a model for the casting. I engraved the cover of the box (previously covered with terra-cotta) with stylized signs, although the meaning of this work is not to be understood in these signs.

SIMULACRA (in the Latin larger sense means: copy, effigy, sculpture…) plays a role of criticism to the idea of original (represented by the original wooden box I received) and “copy” (in the way the original one is cast).

You may ask yourself which one has to be considered the original between the two: the two boxes having to be exhibited always together!

I play too with the idea of container and content implicit in the fact that the object is a box.

Finally the title SIMULACRA allows you to think about the platonic concept of mimesis (Art as imitation, in a larger sense), this is not to provide a solution but to push the viewer to think about these matters.

Of Sticks a Stack – a Stake (a Failure?)

Listen, don’t tell anyone: I failed at the object/box (by the way a daily experience, not at all new). But here’s the result, just look at it: everything twisted, turned upside down; the lid, instead of dropping it, has become the basis of a stake (surprise, surprise!). Too small for burning witches, too small for celebrating heroes, but small enough for the kindling of a stirring idea.

Whittle Box

My whittle box was created in a moment. I wanted to express through the box something which was inherent about my life as a woman now.

When I began the box, I was looking after a recent exhibition. With time on my hands and feeling at ease and relaxed, I began to craft the box carefully smoothing the edges and finely sanding the surfaces.

I put the box away, took my exhibition to another state and on my return found myself overwhelmed by things to do. Every one wanted a piece of me and I wanted to do it all, but I found myself being whittled away, becoming more fragile with each passing day. I carried my whittle box around with me everywhere, waiting for an opportunity to work on it.

Finally after finding myself locked out of a premises one day tired and frustrated, I took my whittle box out of my bag and began whittling and stuffing the wood shavings back into the box the way I wanted to try and renew myself. After a few hectic minutes of total expression I fell asleep.

My whittle box is an expression of the frustration and fatigue felt by those who give until it hurts, stretch themselves to the limit and find that sometimes, they lose sight of themselves.

 

Untitled

I find this concept very challenging although of course initially, I found the concept of Women Beyond Borders and the form (BOX) contradictory, as boxes inherently are about discreet entities/objects with their own definite boundaries, surfaces and edges etc. And these boundaries are walls in themselves, not just an imaginary line or flat paths on the soil dividing countries nor printed lines on the map. In other words, the whole notion of borders and liberating women from it contradicts the very form of the box given to every participant that say so disturbingly otherwise. My intention for the approach to producing a work for this project is to deal with this collision of concept and form. I have gathered a few women and men from the community I am with, to witness a cremation of this box, after which the ashes would be placed in a custom made replica of the box but it will be in cut glass. Death to borders–of course the glass box and its glass walls is practically a vitrine – to enshrine the diminishing of all borders that divide us.