Recently Hart House purchased some drawings for their collection. Here are the statements about each work that I'd written for their acquisition committee:
Across mediums, I work within the realm of girlhood.
Within this theme, my aim is to portray a
disorienting psychological space that is both visceral and otherworldly. I approach both fantastical and real elements
with equal weight and total sincerity to engage my subjects in honest terms – to
acknowledge the strange light that is cast by the subjects’ internal lens. The
outcome is not an expression of surrealism, but an assertion that one’s experiences
of the so-called “outside” world are as emotional, weird, and difficult to
determine as they seem.
New Horns for Hirsh: Goats as a symbol of the illusory realm
An illusion by which we can become more real
- Ben Okri. Mental Fight
Throughout my work, the goat is a
remnant of the internal realm of childhood. During childhood, our limited understanding
enables a visceral plasticity between the imaginary and the real. Forced by a lack of knowledge into a sort of hyper-phenomenological
state, children naturally make jumps in logic and override the unknown.
Although the girls I draw are
clearly not farm girls,
the presence of goats in my work is not entirely outlandish – goats are neither
as absurd as alligators nor as neutral as a house cat. Being both plausible but unlikely, the goats
in my work could either be real or from the girl’s imagination.
For the girls in my work, the illusory realm continues to
compete and overlap with reality. Their
internal world is so powerful that they cannot fully leave – and they continue struggling
to identify the imaginary. Retreating into the fantastical also functions as a
coping mechanism in the
face of grief and trauma, – a way to defend the self
against destructive realities, to protect one’s imagination against the shit of
the world.
Misreading
signs in Caduceus
In this drawing, the
relationship between the two girls is intentionally ambiguous. Although they may merely be playing, the
adult viewer senses a possible violent or sexual undertone to their
interaction. I’m interested in
the conflict between the internal world of childhood imagination and the adult
narrative of reality. It is not until the transition out of
childhood that the
fluidity between the fantastical and the real are replaced by a system of
binary opposition. The assertion of reality
consequently invalidates and re-inscribes
the knowledge and experience gained in the realm of childhood.
Depicted on the egg/orb in the bottom-right of
the drawing is the Rod of Asclepius, an ancient Greek medical symbol. In 1902, medical department of the US Army
mistakenly adopted Caduceus - a winged staff flanked by two copulating snakes -
as their official emblem. Although
Caduceus represents negotiation
and commerce, it
eventually took on the symbolism and meaning of Asclepius in much of the
Western world. My interest is in the
tendency of the dominant reading to be an apparatus that functions to undermine
all other interpretations, shape our perception and govern
our social responses.
Harm and help in The Singing Room II
The mise-en-scene of this drawing is
meant to be ambiguous. It is not clear
whether the girls are being rescued or dragged against their will.
The
Singing Room II (and
all aforementioned drawings) are from my series Are They a Threat. This
title insinuates a vague possibility of danger.
I am influenced by Rita Ackermann, and in particular her painting Should I Call the Ambulance? My interpretation of this painting is that the
girls are unable to identify danger, and require permission or acknowledgement to
seek help. This leads into a broader
criticism of the toxic culture surrounding young women, their inability to
defend themselves, and learned tendency to play into and perpetuate it.
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| Rita Ackermann Should I Call the Ambulance? |
