| Popis: |
This research is based on the assertion that personal histories, memories and associations require conduits through which to form a viable mode of expression. Here my own body is the conduit through which I perform and record the world around me; drawing is taken as performative, building on the arguments of art curators and writers Cornelia H. Butler and Catherine de Zegher. The body is a dynamic mechanism that incorporates variable patterns of movement, occupation, and density, and the space surrounding it therefore becomes a highly charged zone of intertwined activity between the physical and the psychical. Anzieu Didier identifies this space as an area where pacts are negotiated between outside and inside, and where meaningful encounters take place between the two. It is the liminal space of the skin that bears the traces of such encounters. From this perspective the thesis focuses on various types of mark making between the body and its immediately surrounding spaces. It investigates the physical, historical and conceptual perception of an arm s length , that distance between body and world. Through the performativity of drawing the research critically examines this space as measuring, mapping and covering the body in relation to gesture and form. It charts meaningful encounters between the body and space through a number of visual methods, unconventional materials and practices, including the body as both instrument and site of such performances. My resulting works are cartographies, a type of visual mapping that charts the socio-political and religious boundaries experienced by a Muslim female body in various spaces. But more than this, they also give rise to one s ability to navigate the various boundaries that continually reconfigure the perception of a given space, time and location in relation to the body. |
