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Janaina Medeiros
hello vonnie
Misplaced Lens Cap
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Game of Thrones Daily
Kaledo Art
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YOU ARE THE REASON
#extradirty
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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Show & Tell
Three Goblin Art
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
One Nice Bug Per Day
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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@theartofmadeline
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@scarletwinterjournal
to create my cyanotype prints, i used pre prepared paper that i bought online, and exposed the prints at home in sunlight. I made paper cut outs closely based on the drawings i had done, and taped them lightly to the cyanotype paper. i then taped the paper to a board, and left the print outside in the sun while i set a timer for the duration of its respective song. once the timer was up i took the print inside and ran it under water to finish the exposure, then left it to dry.
my first thought when i consider drawing to music is always Kandinsky. his works perfectly capture how music appears when you are thinking of it in shapes and lines. i have been finding music to sound very curved and circular- at least the songs i have been drawing to.
is death abject? are pigeons/rodents abject as they threaten our sense of cleanliness?
Maurice Blanchot- “ Death exists, but what form of existence does it have?”
Maurice Blanchot- “Death must exist for me not only at the very last moment, but as soon as I begin to live and in life's intimacy and profundity.”
a beautiful quote from the philosopher (among other things) Maurice Blanchot. i found him through this talk by artist Ed Atkins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8tb3KiEg5o
Blanchot considers death a lot in his writings, so i will definitely be researching his work further. i love this idea of death being a constant in order for life to be truly appreciated.
another thing that inspired me from the contextual lecture on Sign and Spectacle was a discussion surrounding the privilege of being able to look away from something.
‘to look or not to look is to exercise choice and influence’.
this is true of pigeons. subliminally i think everyone feels ‘above’ pigeons- in height most tangibly, in ability to communicate, be successful in monetary terms- pigeons are not a common thought in our human centric world. everyone exercises privilege when they walk past a deformed bird without looking/noticing.
i think the act of noticing is very important to this work. since i have been noticing pigeons, i cannot stop, and i want to watch them for longer every time i see them. for me, this memento mori is inescapable, it’s everywhere, and it is my friend. indirectly, i no longer fear death or harm with the passion i once did. these birds are living out cycles every day, as i am, and i am captivated.
from the Contextual Studies lectures, i have been thinking about Marshall McLuhan’s theory ‘the medium is the message’. he says this in regards to technology, and that the way we consume news/information changes the context of the information, and perhaps the information itself. (at least, this is how i understand it.)
this got me thinking about how i have used mediums to convey a message (in a more loose sense) in my own work. i knew i wanted to use lino cut printing as a method, as the cutting away of the lino to create an image felt very symbolic in regards to the life cycles i have been thinking about. removing instead of adding in order to make a final work. i also re used the lino scraps in one of the prints, sticking them on to create texture, almost like feathers. i felt this was conceptually important, again in regards to the life cycles present in this project.
i will be displaying the pieces of lino i used for printing with my other work, not only because i think they look beautiful, but because this medium has felt so important to this project. it feels like closure, the end of a cycle.
asemic writing felt very important the further i progressed with this work, coming to manifest once i started to think about pigeon graveyards/tombstones. i imagined graves formed from mud, sticks, feathers and rubbish, with scratches to mark who each grave was for. asemic in the sense that they look meaningless, but to the pigeons in my imagination, they are understandable and sacred.
i made these tombstones out of terracotta clay for its muddy appearance. in future i will be revisiting this with sticks etc mixed in with the clay.
asemic writing seems to always be at the forefront of my mind. i love the idea of ‘meaningless’ writing, that actually means a lot, you just need to view it in a different way. or maybe you don’t. it’s such a fluid and free form/technique, and i think it can be really emotive- it also feels like a secret code, perhaps one that only the writer will ever be able to read.
i saw this work by Dora Maar at tate modern recently, and was captivated by how asemic (meaning ‘without semiotic meaning’) these scratches felt. they felt exactly like a eulogy for a pigeon, or some other critter, scratching in vain with their graceless claws.
looking at pigeons and rodents as a lens to view human mortality has been so interesting. through this project i have realised that in my opinion they are the perfect parallel for- poor mental health, feelings of unworthiness, but also worthiness, and the calm and reflective times that result from solitude.
watching pigeons out of my living room (pun not intended but very appropriate) window every day has become like a kind of meditation. they swarm with their friends and family above their collective roof, or take time for themselves to sit atop a chimney pot. observing their behaviour feels like one huge Memento Mori- i am constantly being reminded (in a positive way) of my own mortality and fragility by these friends/creatures/comrades.
i did a lot of Primary Pigeon Research for this project. most of these photos i took but 2 were taken by my pals Darcy and Lucy, who sent them to me. it was nice to think that people saw a dead pigeon and thought to send it to me.
https://www.boredpanda.com/dead-raccoon-memorial-shrine-mourning-deadraccoonto-toronto/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
part of my main inspiration for the prints i made in this project was this news article from a few years ago- after a raccoon died in toronto and animal control were slow to remove it, strangers made a small memorial shrine for him. i had this image in my head all the while i was making the pigeon lino prints.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBK8mOM_6F4
choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker to music by Steve Reich. I love how the dancers respond to the music, and the third dancer in the middle created by their shadows.
a super inspiring piece of work i have found is Exposure by Tehching Hsieh, which was shown at the 2017 Venice Biennale. i found this information about the piece here: https://www.tfam.museum/File/files/02exhibition/170414_57VB/57VB_DT_Brochure.pdf