“REVOLUCIONES: THE POWER OF WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION” will use the art form of assemblage as an avenue of resistance to explore, dissect, subvert and reconfigure the visual portrayals of gender and sexuality in media text.
Violence of Representation | Workshop Description
Colonized, commodified, and reshaped by market forces, the palimpsestic female body is a site where cultural phenomenology and social perversions have historically been inscribed. Consumer society is fueled by a market that by nature must constantly develop new consumables and new consumers; as such, the body has increasingly become its terrain over the years. The dichotomy between self-representation and imposed representation reveals the complexities of gender and gender relations. As the state of the spectacle empties and nullifies every real identity, the media offers ideologically infused avenues for identity construction in its place. From the array of media texts, gender roles are realized, social norms are cemented and beauty standards are established. Body dysmorphia and plastic surgery are symptoms of a society that propagates beauty as the standard against which all women are measured, hinging a woman’s worth on her waistline and rendering self-hood a shifting experience - inauthentic and skin deep. Images are powerful—they shape, distort, liberate. Yet images can be manipulated as much as they can manipulate. As so, assemblage can function as a form of resistance, engagement, dialog. Through the appropriation of complicit media text, this course takes a look at how the poetic language of collage can be used to subvert overt representations, reclaim the gaze, reverse the narrative, and usher in more fluid, inclusive expressions of identity. Using the maelstrom of archival material in circulation as a point of departure, This workshop examines the semiotic representation of gender and sexuality within the postmodern feminist framework of fragmentation. Analogous to the way society compartmentalizes, this refusal of stable categorization through abstractions affirms the ambiguities intrinsic to gender and sexuality. Marrying disconnected fragments of the known, a new blueprint of the unfamiliar emerges, a dialectical confrontation with reality constructed, radical forms of subjectivity born. This is a personal reality, not a programmatically social one. Through stripping away visual forms of representation, new constructions that go beyond objectification, exploitation, and hyper-sexualization are created. From this reconfiguration of media text, new meanings and readings of gender, sexuality, beauty, class emerge that speak to strength and power.
Colonized, commodified and reshaped by market forces, the palimpsestic female body is a site where cultural phenomenology and social perversions have historically been inscribed. Consumer society is fueled by a market that by nature must constantly develop new consumables and new consumers; as such, the female body has increasingly become its terrain. The dichotomy between self-representation and imposed representation reveals the complexities of gender roles and relations. As the state of the spectacle empties and nullifies every real identity, the media offers ideologically infused avenues for identity construction in its place. From the array of media text, gender roles are realized, social norms are cemented and beauty standards are established. Body dysmorphia and plastic surgery are symptoms of a society that propagates beauty as the standard against which all women are measured, hinging a woman’s worth on her waistline and rendering self-hood a shifting experience - inauthentic and skin deep.
Images are powerful—they shape, distort, liberate. Yet images can be manipulated as much as they can manipulate. As so, assemblage can function as a form of resistance, engagement, dialog. Through the appropriation of complicit media text, this workshop takes a look at how the poetic language of collage can be used to subvert overt representations, reclaim the gaze, reverse the narrative and usher in more fluid, inclusive expressions of identity. With the maelstrom of archival material in circulation at our disposal, this course examines the semiotic representation of gender and sexuality within the postmodern feminist framework of fragmentation.
Analogous to the way society compartmentalizes, collage allows one to dissect, rearrange, redefine and express reality on one's own terms. This refusal of stable categorization through abstractions affirm the ambiguities intrinsic to sex and sexuality. Marrying disconnected fragments of the known, a new blueprint of the unfamiliar emerges, a dialectical confrontation with reality is constructed, new radical forms of subjectivity are born. This is a personal reality, not a programmatically social one. Through stripping away visual forms of representation, new constructions that go beyond the objectification, exploitation and hyper-sexualization created and challenged. From this reconfiguration of media text, new meanings and readings of gender, sexuality, and identity are defined that speak to strength and power.
“REVOLUCIONES, THE POWER OF WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION” will use the art form of assemblage to explore, dissect and reconfigure how females are visually portrayed. Beyond the examination of identity, the artificial dichotomies between abstraction/rationality and representation/reality will also be explored. These ideas will be paired with instruction on methodology and a range of technical approaches to the medium: assemblage, digital processes, photomontage etc. Please come prepared with plenty of material to work with. Historical and contemporary precedents will also be covered to contextualize current mixed media practices, as will the contributions of several female artists who have been influential in pushing boundaries of the medium, such as Deborah Roberts, Hannah Hoch, Martha Rosler. The importance of research, artistic process, visual documentation, personal concepts, metaphor, and appropriation will also be discussed. At its heart, the workshop aspires to impress how much perception is shaped by context and how creative expression is hinged on the smart implementation and articulation of both.
“Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”
