Performance And Self-portrayal -- a dialog and publication

  Self-Portrait I am a painter of souls, Not bodies. I paint the soul's Unseen landscapes, Its secret gardens, Its hidden paths. I paint the soul's Hidden face, Its mask of pain, Its mask of joy. I paint the soul's Invisible wounds, Its scars of love, Its scars of loss. I paint the soul's Invisible wings, Its wings of hope, Its wings of dream. I am a painter of souls, Not bodies. I paint the soul's Unseen beauty, Its hidden truth. published in Ariel Poems, 1962

  I am an artist/performer working across moving image, digital and new media, and working predominantly with my body to communicate ideas of perfection, social media, disability through the lens of a middle aged woman. I am interested in taking part in your project as it highlights the intersection between the two relevant mediums of my practice.

When I started photography in the late 2000s, I quickly began to take a lot of self-portraits. At that time, I didn’t dare to take pictures of people, so it was easier for me to take self-portraits. By exploring the question of appearances year after year, I created several series of self-portraits. And as with the selfies, I realized over time that the camera pointed at me had the power to transform me. As soon as I set the self-timer and stepped in front of the lens, I created a new identity. Like an actress, I automatically put myself in the shoes of a character and gradually moved away from the faithful representation of reality. Strangely, I rarely took my self-portraits in the presence of others, as if this change was too intimate, too personal. With few ingredients, «Asymétrie» shows me as a photographer and as a model, talking about the moment when I leave the real to reach something more fake. With this work, I show how I was deceived by the photographic medium, and how I can...

Caitlyn Matthews is a contemporary artist who’s practice’s focal point centres around the body’s relationship to material and obscurity. [I am] interested in the labour of the performance, the vulnerability of the body and the abstract effects of interacting with different materials and lighting and how these things can manipulate the body. They often step into these awkward moments, implicating themself and the viewer. [My] practice is influenced by the Fourth-wave feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and the marginalization of women in society. This piece of photography comes from a film series where the artists explore their personal relationship to body, sexuality, and gender. This is explored through the interaction between, body, space, material, and light. The image is layered footage of th...

I used crawling here so as to slow the movement down and so as to experience being close to the ground. The action becomes about the mark making effect, as ones ability to see is blinkered by the close to the ground positioning and by the tall grass surrounding. Through using crawling I saw spiders, bugs, flies, different grass and flowers. I felt every lump and bump and uneven area. As discussed before the motion of crawling is also democratic to the body, extending (if performed carefully) equal gravitational weight bearing pressure throughout the hands and knees. It also requires the the R and L side of the brain to work together to coordinate the movement.  An act of attendance. An act of exploration.  An act of mark making. An act of endurance. An act of observation.

Circumstances find me pared down, reaching for performative art as an outward confirmation of the business of surviving, of being alive. I'm processing how that looks: not inserting my presence into the space, which performs continuously with or without me? Or manipulating the space with my presence? Or manipulating my presence into a manifestation of space? I photographed the lowliest of bodyparts: the feet. These images I manipulated into imaginary desert landscapes--hence my body has become the terrain. It's sterile and lifeless--yet a mysterious energy suggest we explore further, and walk in...

so the series is all about my personal journey with my autism, I create self portraits that tell stories of my neurodivergence and what struggles I go through and what makes me unique. I do this with the hopes of educating others on autism and inspiring fellow autistic creators   this photo in particular is about how I struggle sometimes in social situations, people start to become blurs and my brain can’t keep up! I shot it as a self portrait with a sheet of fabric on a slow shutter speed to show the blur I can feel in life - There was a day, probably about a year ago, when I was talking to someone. It felt like such an intense conversation that everything started blurring, I blurred, what I said, what the other person said and what I thought, all began to sway and stir in my mind. I've had this idea dreamed up for so long, acting as a mental visual when this feeling would ever come back. I felt a responsibility to myself to create this image, as if I felt I needed to portray...

  My work explores individualism within portraits, I like to take into consideration a person's personality and portray it through my images. I explore this with settings, where you place a person in an image is extremely important, fashion, lighting and colour are other key elements to my work. I very rarely request specific clothing to be worn as I like to portray people in their own clothing to emphasis individualism. I find people's lives and peoples stories very interesting so it has always been a key element to my work. During the lockdown I took to self portraits to express myself and who I was using these interests I have and documented my feelings.

The artist flaunts danger by haunting the Moor at night. Recording a kind of spatial bogeyman that frightens residents by playing daredevil, becoming bait to coax it out, she also plays at embodying this fear herself. Disturbing shallow gendered understandings of urban violence and our deep-seated fear of humanity’s shadow, the artist becomes a shape-shifter. Every self-portrait is a performance and every performance a self-portrait.

In many ways I'm a creative soul who speaks through writing music, recording music video's and performing on stage. At the moment I'm on a journey of discovery as a visual artist who paints and often gets sidetracked into photography, drawing and screen printing. I love surprising others with my creative wellbeing.

I am a visual artist and poet interested in the experience and process of creating. My work is driven by my love of play, my curiosity and a deep feeling of connectiveness with nature and all there is. When I am creating, I usually feel in the flow. Sometimes my body plays a part in the creation process. Depending on the situation, I perform for the camera or use my camera for a self-portrait. Either way, initiating the process happens spontaneously. Sunlight, a moody sky, my shadow, or something in the environment can spark excitement and set in motion the creation of an image. I may collaborate with my partner or with an artist friend, who is with me at the time, or if I am alone use my camera. Themes usually evolve during the creation process. They depend on my emotions at the time, my imagination and/or intuition. Recurrent themes (with a series of images & poems) are titled “All things must pass” “My life before” “Joy of life” and “My Shadow” The image is from my series “...

As a mature woman my work is the result of frustrations in relation to others’ expectations and misconceptions of me. Taking up space, unapologetically, has allowed a performative version of myself to emerge. I am interested in this commitment to performativity by mature women on social media sites. My images are made quickly and with materials and props that are to hand. The resulting photographs include filters and digitally drawn elements that build a persona, and my working process can be seen as a playground for the exploration of potential irreverent storytelling, both real and imagined. The swirling farrago of sensations that is menopause slaps you in the face, hard, and lets you know, unequivocally, that you are on a one-way street with no turning circle at the end of it. So, having less life ahead of me than there is behind compels my heels to dig into the earth so that the dizzying swiftness with which I am travelling along this one-way street, towards the exit from which th...

[they] are dressed gregariously, inappropriate for their age. They wear bright clashing colours, strange wigs, and are blindfolded with silver scarves. They walk blindly into the future not knowing how the incidental audience of the City Centre will react. The work is about the vulnerability and presence of women on the street, we embrace the unknown, become creative wanderers. We notice that to some, we are clearly invisible, an embarrassment to others as they shift their gaze and move position. Not evident at the time, we realised that in most of the performance photographs, it was men who stared at us, an observable oddity punctuating someone’s lunch time break. We felt it was that precise moment when the ‘look’ was captured that the performance was actualised. A connection made, albeit fleeting…our work was done.

... a self representation in the sense that I am attempting to find myself within the landscape...my place, my 'self'... there is a neuroscientist: Damasio, and his model of consciousness shows a route to accessing memory and extended functions such as language processing, and through this model, the extended consciousness then emerges. This is what I was trying to capture in the image that I am sending you....just in case. The accompanying words are as follows. 'I am tree. In my canopy the world whispers, roots rest in the darkness, but do not lose themselves there. They struggle with all the strength of their life force for one thing only: to live according to the laws laid down by leaf and bud. I am tree. I listen. I can learn truth, undeterred by the particulars of life; I trust that my labours are borne out. A kernel of a thought escaping as I stand uneasy, before my own childish thoughts. I am tree. I speak...but I do not always listen. I am tree. I am home. I have a...

Within my artistic practice, I find that using my body as a medium of exploration and experimentation is vital in embracing the idea that art, lived experience, and the world around me are all deeply interconnected. Through this approach, I am able to incorporate the effects of these elements on the way my body and mind react to primitive contact with the spaces I inhabit. In my art practice, I often use improvisation as a tactic, claiming the unplanned as moments of chaos and occasional beauty, which are typically captured through digital formats.The nude form allows my body to be connected without restriction to the environment through bodily senses. When I am undressed, I no longer feel like myself, but rather experience a sense of overwhelming power and a disconnect from societal structures of human behaviour. When I take away aesthetic things, like clothes or makeup, I feel united with womanhood and a connection to all women. Through my art, I am able to express and explore the co...

I am interested in the idea of performing for the camera, especially as an artist who draws. I came to this point by wondering how I can stay in the process of making rather than skipping to the made, being in the process, rather than the outcome. I am also interested in the embodied notion of being an artist, when does one be or become an artist? Putting my body, my body drawing, in the work is a way of celebrating the act of drawing but also exploring the performative notion of making artwork. If I make artwork then I am an artist. By performing for the camera I am made to do something but that doing then becomes something .I am also interested in the kind of knowledge that is held in our bodies and comes out through the movement of our bodies, the kind of knowledge that can not easily be expressed or transmitted through words, or even through a static piece of work made through this movement,  I want to dance but I can draw. I can’t dance but I want to draw. Drawing as dancing, ...

  I am writing in application to the Performance and self portrayal survey. I am writing also as 1 part of three people. JDD (me),  Heini Marie King  and Cyrus Hung. Below will explain the details of our performance, photography and themes. I am interested in the survey, its outcomes and how it can help develop the dialogue that has started between the three of us. The text below and image attached gives a basic outline as to what we are working on.  HMK, CH and I are developing a dialogue. It involves us  performing Parallel Play Our performance requires us interpreting the sound of one another’s mark making and infrequent peripheral vision which we co-create into a dialogue with drawing and movement as the medium. Our conversation around freedom of movement, power of media and decolonising through dialogue started last year. One of the recordings of our performance is the mark made diptych as a form of dialogue.  The name of the work, Parallel P...

  One of the most invaluable lessons I learned in my art history classes was the difference between being nude and being naked. Being nude was reserved for goddesses, historical women of significance, etc. Being naked was for the contemporary woman and was scandalous (Manet's Olympia being a prime example of this phenomena). Growing up in an age where women feared (still fear) the potential release of non-consensual images, I was told to never allow my body to be showcased on film or photograph. It would mark the end to a career I had not even started, potential relationships, and social standing. As a teenager, this logic stood in juxtaposition to the mass images I was consuming in film and media of naked women as commodities to the male gaze. I went to art galleries where I saw rooms filled with naked (actually nude) women. I had to wonder what form of nakedness is correct? Apparently not mine if it was willing. When I began working with the idea of Performance of Camera, I was e...

As an artist, I am constantly exploring the complex relationship between the self and the other. In this piece (and series), titled "The World, The Flesh and The Breath," I delve into the deeply personal and often painful experience of body dysmorphia. Through these works, I seek to examine the ways in which we stretch and distort our bodies in order to fit into society's narrow definition of beauty. Drawing on the theory of abjection, I explore the ways in which we reject and disfigure our own bodies in order to conform to societal expectations. Through the use of self-portraiture, I depict the emotional and physical struggle of living with body dysmorphia. Each painting represents a unique perspective on the self and the other, inviting the viewer to consider their own relationship to their body and the world around them. At the heart of this work is a commitment to vulnerability and authenticity. Through my own personal experiences, I hope to open up a dialogue about t...

 When we began work to develop a survey of the space that is between and around  Performance Art , Body Art , Live Art  Photographic Self Portraiture or Portrayal we realised that we needed to listen to as many voices as possible -- the span of alternate names for these practices alone was a sufficient clue. In the Call For Artists we suggested that we should try to develop momentum for a conversation, a dialogue between artists. This blog is intended as a starting point ... Formulating the call alone was an iterative process and allowed us to understand more about our starting point. Whether it will help in the ongoing remains to be seen. The initial impetus for this project came from Aldobranti  with whom FoscoFornio have previous collaboration history. In his turn he reached out to artists he had previously worked with: As you may have gathered, my work in photography and identity is closely tied to performativity -- the decisive act in a moment to make an image a...

 Here is the  complete history of this project. I have gone through the comments and where I am reasonably confident in my reasons, I have re-attributed an anonymous comment to a specific contributor. If you believe that I have got these decisions wrong please let me know. Each contributor signed off on the use of their words and image to the publishers for this project, however while this blog and this summary document remain accessible we have to ask you to respect each other's intellectual property rights if you end up using using or quoting from any part of this project.