Show Entry 10/24

Digital C-Print 10x5in Midlothian, VA 2009

Digital C-Print 10x6in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x6in New York, New York 2009

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 10/22

Going through this last installment of my college career has got me thinking about how all of this will wrap up and end abruptly on December 12th. After four and a half years, how do you sum up your final collection and technically be done with it? (even if I do choose to revisit it at a later date). I have been quite nostalgic this past week and digging up old memories from my short stint at JMU to my somewhat longer stay here at VCU. These years in college are filled with instances and experiences that have brought me to where I am today and have influenced the work I am making today. Sophomore year while in AFO one of my first visiting artist lectures was in the AFO building with Kate Gilmore speaking about her latest performance work. I knew I was really intrigued by her words and her actions, I just did not realize that she would be someone who would have such a strong influence on me and on what I would do months before graduation. Taking the Senior Portfolio class out of order has actually benefited me as a person and has also done great things for my body of work. I have had the opportunity to work with two different classes of photo students: the class that I have essentially grown up with during my time at VCU Photo and the class that was one year ahead of me. Not having the strong personal ties with the class ahead of me, I felt that my critiques with them were more about my work and less about me. Because I am an emotional person I tend to read into things heavily and not really knowing any of these kids that were critiquing my work really helped. It was straight forward and all about the work. And because of the amount of good feedback I received last semester, I feel very comfortable moving away from my last semester’s performances and moving into a new genre of performances. These performances of the every day woman across the world are something new and exciting for me to really dive into and explore. I, as a 23-year-old female, have that inner desire to do something out of character ever so often aiming to release something pent up inside. We all have something different that we hold inside and that something is usually on our minds frequently and has tendencies to really bring us down. Last semester the performances were focused on struggles, opening up and digging into you to find some answers and some truth. The performances showed the process and now I would like for these new performances to conclude my time here as an undergraduate and answer some questions. Questions being where are I am going, how do I feel, how have I changed, how have I grown, who have I become… to name a few. I could never have predicted how my life would have panned out in college (and I would not have wanted to either). However, I can say that I would never have seen myself become the woman/artist that I currently am. The amount of strength and self esteem that I have gained from my time spent here is something that I would never want to give back or do with out. I feel comfortable making work that is important to me and I get excited when speaking of that work with others and sharing my enthusiasm about it. I crave visual knowledge on a daily basis and am always looking at life moving by more intently now; picking up on smaller portions of the day that may really have something important to tell you.

This is my evening of being a senior and being nostalgic. Amen.

Monday a.m. Artist Post 10/19

Chinese artist, Song Dong was born and currently lives and works in Beijing, China. He explores cultural and social issues through performance art, video installation, calligraphy, sculpture, and site-specific projects. The first time I saw one of Dong’s pieces was at the MoMA this past summer. He had an installation piece on the second floor titled “Waste Not.” “The installation exposes the contents of his mother’s home acquired over 50 years, during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or waste not was a prerequisite for survival.” (Excerpt taken from a Q&A with Dong). The installation included several empty tubes of toothpaste, buttons, watches, cups, Styrofoam containers, and tons of other miscellaneous objects. This installation took over the entire second floor and was very amusing and confusing at the same time. The whole time that I was circling the outer perimeter of the piece, I was trying to decipher the importance of all of these daily objects that were now being put on display for the New York population. This was his first US based show and he made quite a name and place for himself in one of the fine art capitols of the world. He has been noted as a significant figure in the development of Chinese conceptual art since the early 1990’s and the US can only gain from our neighbors across the seas. In 2005 when he installed this piece for Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, he created a book depicting the entire collection of items. This installation took a large team of people to assemble and place each item in its exact position.

Dong has had exhibitions in several places around the world including London, Beijing, Germany, Korea, and the United States. In 1998 he was included in the “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” that is organized by the Asia Society Galleries, in 1998 the “Transcience: Chinese Art at the End of the 20th Century” organized by a museum in Chicago, Illinois and in 2002 he participated in the Gwangju Biennale. Also in 2002, he took part in the Fourth Asia-Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia.

Dong is known for his intelligent performances and has been said to be an artist “emerging from a strong Beijing-based avant-garde performance art community.” His performance titled “Stamping the Water” performed in 1996 is a series of 36 photographs that records him stamping the sacred waters of the Lhasa River, Tibet with a wooden seal. His means of documentation and presentation reminded me heavily of my recent practices when dealing with the many questions that come about with performance art and how to display it.

“Jump” from 1999 is a performance of Dong jumping up and down in front of the Forbidden City in Beijing. He performs this act of jumping in the middle of a crowd of people who either don’t seem to notice him or don’t seem to care that he is there. He also uses video as a means of documenting some of his work and he spoke quite interestingly about why he uses this medium on occasions. “The medium of video is elemental. It produces moving images and sounds that cannot be touched. It has no shape but provides a strong light and can be projected onto any object.” He used this enthusiasm for video on his personal project titled “Touching My Father” that was completed in 1998. Here he projected onto his father’s body a video image of his own hand. Dong was touching on issues of father and son contact and the lack there of during his adolescence and on. In the Chinese culture it is not traditional or acceptable to hug or embrace in any sort of way. This is something that seems hard for Dong to move around as he has used this concept to drive several of his personal pieces.

One of his pieces that I thought seemed interesting and more than what was said about it was his ongoing piece titled “Water Diary” that was started in 1995 and is still continuing today. When Dong was younger his father encouraged him to use stone and water to practice his calligraphy as to not waste the precious papers and inks; to conserve the resources since there were expensive and there were other ways to practice the art. Now, he uses this memory from his childhood as power for one of his ongoing piece that includes him privately writing down his diary entries on a stone with water each day and photographing it. “It became a way to release his emotions in absolute privacy, leaving no trace.” This act, while it is very public in that stones outdoors are public domain also has a unique secret ness to it as well. It interests me that he has been writing for all these years now and building an enormous collection of these images of his writings in water on rocks. I think that rocks.

When I saw his work at the MoMA I felt like we had some of the same aesthetics and thoughts on things. I felt very similar to him and I was unaware of his other work which turns out reminds me more of me than his piece at the MoMA did. The idea that you can take something out of every day life, create a concept, and put it on display is something I think of every day and I feel like Dong works very much in the same way. It was cool to see someone who does performance work document it similarly to my means of documentation and also using some of the same compositions I use as well.



MoMA article

"How Lattidues Become Forms" Article

"Waste Not" Installation Article

Q&A with Song Dong

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 10/15

Lately I have been thinking over the idea of juxtaposing an act of freeing oneself and then placing the documentation of that act in a place of confinement. A place where in many cultures a woman is told is her place where she should stay. Yes in the states women have gained more respect and are given more opportunities to make a career and a future for themselves independently. The traditional, marry and stay at home with the children, has now expanded to the new woman of today. The multi-tasker, the superwoman, the mother, the wife, the caretaker, and the office manager or CEO at her work. This is today here but this is not reality in places outside of the U.S.

When I did my first performance, as I talked about in my last blog, I attempted to embody my character. To emotionally capture and feel the stiffness of my situation and what about my life and social conditions that I am having a problem with while acting as a Japanese Geisha. I watched several performance videos by the Geisha and tried to take in who they are on stage and what it is that they are saying and performing. When I put myself on my own outdoor stage I then became a suppressed human with needs and wants to be free.

When I had my first meeting with Jeff he had something jarring to say about my previous collection that I believe is what tipped me off into heading into this direction I currently am. As he was reviewing through my previous work he was drawing these domestic homely correlations from them. For example my piece in the field hurdling over all the furniture he took as a woman trying to make it through and beyond all these household items and not getting stuck in the process. The other performance he made that correlation to was the indoor performance that depicted layers of a problem using layers of clothing. He saw the articles of clothing all around the figure as weight, domestic weight. He saw the figure drowning in her laundry/responsibilities/life. I am starting to see the connections and feel that continuing in the direction that I am could be a good place and also keep my work cohesive between the two semesters.

Brian Ulrich Lecture: 10/14/09

Granger, IN 2003

Value City 2008

Born in 1971, Guggenheim Fellowship Award recipient in 2009, Brian Ulrich was our visiting artist today. Born in Northport, New York, Ulrich now lives in Chicago, Illinois and has been shown in several museums and galleries. He has work held in the collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Ulrich began his presentation with an audio clip recorded on site of his new/current work. That collection is titled “Dark Stores, Ghostboxes, and Dead Malls”. Shot with an 8x10 film camera, Ulrich captures abandoned retail locations at night with long exposures. His reason for playing the audio recording was to give us audience some insight into what kind of people he has run ins with while being on shoot at these abandoned spots late at night.

He moved his presentation back several years after playing the audio recording to discuss his first collection/project titled “Copia” that he began shortly after 9/11 in 2001. After the planes hit the twin towers, Ulrich said that all he wanted to do was connect with people and figure out a way to capture with the camera that emotional moment. Taken from the lecture write up “In response to a national call for citizens to bolster the American Economy through shopping,” Ulrich bases his work heavily on visual language in all these retail locations. I felt that that statement may have been too evident because he seemed to only skim the surface of all his images. He never really got down to the center core of his concept. I felt as though all of his comments were solely explaining what we were looking at in the simplest terms. That was one thing that disappointed me about this lecture when I compare how much I was able to grasp from Penelope Umbrico’s lecture and really see how each of her projects streamlined right into the next. I felt as though Ulrich was choppy and his presentation seemed random.

At the second half of his lecture when he started going into his new stuff, I felt more interested and inclined to listen to what he had to say about these images. I was secretly hoping he would reveal his secrets and really dig deep into why he was doing this.

artist website

Monday a.m. Artist Post 10/12

Mineko Iwasaki


Geisha is a traditional female Japanese entertainer whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance. “Gei” means art while “sha” means the person or doer. These performing artists are elegant and precise but in order to get to the esteemed Geisha status, these women must go through several stages of disciplined training. Geisha houses of today are called Okiya. “The elegant, high-cultured world that are a part of is called the “Karyukai” or the flower and willow world.” There is some confusion still today about supposed prostitution amongst the Geisha and their clients. There are two types of female performers in Japan; Geisha and Oiran. They have the same hair, make up, and costuming but the Oiran knot their obi in the front for supposed easy removal. The Oiran are the ones that have been known to engage in sexual activity with their clients. Not Geisha.
Mineko Iwasaki, born Mineko Tanaka, was born on November 2, 1949. She is no longer a Geisha but in her late 20’s Iwasaki was Japan’s number one Geisha but retired at age 29. At an early age she left home to study Japanese traditional dance at the Geisha House in Kyoto at age five. She adopted the last name Iwasaki here when the owner Madame Oima adopted her. By age 21, she had earned the title of Japan’s best dancer. She performed for celebrities such as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. The downfall of her passion and fervor for Geisha started when she grew frustrated with the traditional bound world of being Geisha and then retired at her career’s peak.
Several years ago, Iwasaki agreed to be interviewed by writer Arthur Golden while he was in the process of writing “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Golden misused Iwasaki’s words and created a false vision of what Geisha life is like through the story in his book. Iwasaki was outraged and felt very betrayed by Golden. After Golden published his book, Iwasaki published her own autobiography in response to all of the untrue fictional accounts in Golden’s book. Because Iwasaki agreed to interviews with Golden for his book, she received death threats from certain people for supposedly “violating the traditional Geisha code.”
The Geisha performances are true and sacred to the Japanese culture. The traditional dance motions are very precise however very fluid as well. There is a maintained sense of control throughout the entirety of the performance. There are specific feet shuffling motions while their feet remain stationed on the ground. There are small gestures, not overly self-expressive and the women seem very careful about what they’re doing has a special feel to it.
This past weekend I did a performance inspired by Geisha dance and performance. While I am clearly not trained in their performing art, I did perform a dance that involved instruction and limitation. While wearing an authentic kimono and makeup, I performed outdoors for any passersby to engage and enjoy. An instructional line dance was chosen and played throughout my ipod throughout the performance. I felt strong and had an uncanny feeling of “I don’t care that people may think I am the most bizarre person right now”. This new addition to my performance series feels like a great step to something new and I feel that portraying women from other cultures can open up many doors into new and inventive performances.







Wiki Definition of Geisha
New York Times Article on Iwasaki and her fued with Arthur Golden
Time Magazine Article
Mineko's Bio
Geisha Dance on Youtube

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 10/08

“Onna no jidai” – “The Era of Women”

Women in different cultures and countries, the number 30, the idea of limitation evoking freedom, and performing on the popular day of rest are all things that have been whirling around in my head lately and are the basis for my upcoming performances. My performances have received a great amount of feminist feedback and I have been thinking about how that has made me feel and how I could either work with that input or away from it. But, I knew in order to do that I needed to have a reason. When thinking about what I do when I perform I see myself as being one on one with myself in a space of my own doing something that I want to do. It is very independent and very much an alone process. When thinking about women in the Japanese culture and how they are very much independent and the ruler of the house while indoors but outdoors in public they are somewhat subservient to their men, I wanted to bring forth a group of performances commenting on that. I would like to comment on being able to be who you are with no limitations in public; in the light. I hate to think of feeling so empowered within four walls but that immediately being stripped from you when you walk out behind someone into public. Studies are currently showing that women in Japan are breaking down the inequality barriers chunk by chunk but it is a slow process. In a study conducted in 1992 “which looked at perceptions of the extent to which men and women enjoy equality in the home, the workplace, education, the political arena, legal provisions, and in terms of social attitudes, customs, and conventions, women responded that they thought men received superior treatment in all areas, with the exception of education, in which they thought there was equality.” What I am trying to get to is that when performing for yourself and doing something for yourself, it is your esteem that is being affected and the way you feel about yourself is being affected. These women are being affected every day because of restraints and don’ts that are put on them. I want to open that gate and comment on how it feels to let your guard down and move.
I am going to be performing these on the next few Sundays to come. The idea of performing on the “day of rest” is significant because I look at and consider these days as one where you take care of yourself. It is the beginning of a new week and in order to perform at your highest level, you must keep yourself healthy and upbeat about life and what is coming next. With that said, I will have some limitations to these performances like the amount of time it will last, the type of music I will be listening to, and where I will be performing each one.


Japanese Feminist Movement Article

Culture of Japan