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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Mirror

Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.

My box is titled ‘Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.’ because I live in the dream capital of the world where appearance is paramount, and hope springs eternal.

According to the myth of Pandora, when the winged souls, the 10,000 woes, the spites that plagued mankind, were released by Pandora from the jar, only HOPE was left behind in the jar, and it was delusive HOPE that discouraged the mortals, through her lies, from committing a general suicide.

Because I live in Los Angeles, California, surrounded by vain, foolish, mischievous, idle and beautiful women, such as Pandora, I felt compelled to turn my box into an anti-feminist statement, that Pandora would have appreciated.

Celebration of Beauty

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.

Love

My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.

On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?

On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?

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.

 

Nights and Days of Life

Some days are dark
We don’t get anywhere
We feel stuck in a dead end
Going round and round in a circle
Banging our head like a stone
On the walls of our own limitations

And some days are light
We feel free like a whistle
Our voice rings like a bell
We see light everywhere
We see clear through everything
And all makes sense
All shines and all is well

Such is life
After all
For every single one of us
Isn’t it just a mirror
Reflecting our own inner state

 

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.

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?

 

Indra’s Net

“In the heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact is everything else.”

– Translated by Sir Charles Eliot from the Avatamsaka Sutra, approximately 500 BCE

Lorraine Serena furnished the box
Julie Coale suggested these pearls
Sylvia Hyman recommended Sherry Male for drilling them
Tyree McFarland provided the silvered glass and the glasswork
Daisy gave me the idea for suturing thread
Dr. Dee Dee Fredin supplied it
Dixie Gamble manifested the replacement glass
and Jane Braddock buttoned it up
women’s network.

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.

A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft

My recent work is focused on issues of identity, sexuality and language. I am also interested in women’s history and in women’s roles throughout different cultures.

To address these issues, I explore a variety of media, whatever I feel most appropriate to convey a specific feeling or experience. Confirmation And Discovery Of Witchcraft is an homage to witches and their wisdom and to their power to combine magic, mystery and wisdom.

The box is smoked; the top of the lid shows a young witch casting a love spell. Inside the box are burned matches, inscribed with the names of real women who were burned because of witchcraft accusations. In the mirror is a scroll, in the shape of an uterus where oral language reads: ‘ar yu squerd of mai tiars an mai blod?

Yoni As Mirror Stage

“As a body is to the soul and an oil to the lamp, a yantra is to the divinity.” –Kularnava Tantra (chap v, 86)

Through the mirror you constitute yourself as an object (you observe yourself from the others point of view).

A comment on a certain problem of perception, a problem which tacitly influences our ways of communicating with the world. Languages, images and other forms of representations of reality are not fully transparent tools to relate to the world. In all languages and representations, there is a displacement, or rather, distortion of the world and they are dependent upon the expectations and information we put into play in a communicative situation.

The Distance from Time #2

In Japan it is believed that people are able to keep supernatural, mysterious and precious things in a box. It is prohibited to show them to anyone.

When the lid of the box is raised, it is supernatural and mysterious time, isn’t it?

Additional boxes by same artist

Modoka Hirata, The Distance from Time # 1

Box-Bird and Branch

The cosmos of my work is in a forest. Flights of birds grow on silent trees and huge seeds take different positions. The leaf is the poetic unit which allows the magic passage from the world of plants to the one of animals and from there to the geophysical world.

When I begin my work, I spend a lot of time minutely observing the physical world. Then this state of vigilance is changed through a more distant positioning in which the object I observe is the parallel motion of my creative process to that of nature.

Is there an ecology of conceptual and creative phenomena? I often tend to incorporate ecological concerns by contrasting elements (birds on trees without foliage, seeds with burning interiors) to suggest the interplay of human interventions on natural processes.