ARTIST STATEMENT: Drawing While Maturbating - Assessment 2
Articulating one’s desires within a rigid capitalist society is likely to manifest in each individual as a torturing progression into accepting or not accepting personal pleasures. In my artwork, I aimed to concentrate on the connection between the desire to express ones self freely and present the outcome of creatively expressing something ‘inappropriate’ in a conservative society. The constructed dictatorship we live under suggests that giving into personal desires fails to benefit the larger community, therefore shaming the undiscovered truths that evolve alongside self exploration and development. In my artwork I used my own embarrassing desire to connect with the physical sensation of pure ecstasy - an orgasm. Masturbation being one of the most primitive pastimes of humanity, is often seen as an embarrassing desire, especially for women due to our social constructs. It has been made clear throughout history the dominance of male power through all passes of life, whether it be money, power, and ‘rights’ possessed by men more so than women. As a female in 2015, I feel a sense of powerlessness when it comes to sexual expression, therefor I aimed to use this artwork as a documentation of an attempt to free myself. This artwork is a journey through my personal anxieties through scribbles imitating my body movements and reactions to self exploration.
I created 3 images made with ink and marker on watercolour paper to promote self acceptance and celebrate pride in sexual desire. This artwork focuses on the role of female sexuality and the way in which desire holds a negative stigma. As Felix Guattari says, “Tirelessly it(Capitalism) continues its dirty work of castrating, suppressing, torturing, and dividing up our bodies in order to inscribe its laws on our flesh, in order to rivet to our subconscious its mechanisms for reproducing this system of enslavement.” I attempted to explore the inner workings of my natural body and accepting my ‘immoral’ and ‘inappropriate’ desires to create an a personally liberating collection of works. Holding the pen in one hand and the other hand ‘doing it’s magic’, I synchronised my hand movements on the paper with my physical reactions while masturbating. At one point I found myself drawing a past lovers face, followed by scribbling over it in anxiety and sexual frustration. This technique graphed the motion of my pleasure as an abstract dark form, symbolic to the misunderstood and confusing nature of desire. Danielle Johansen was one of my main inspirations for these artworks. Her works focus on sexual identity as a young woman which often incorporate text using ink an pen with phrases such as, “sorry mum”, highlighting the general embarrassment most people feel about themselves as sexual beings.
Using scattered lines and patterns formed by a stream of consciousness while masturbating. I played with Deleuze' idea that desire fuels production. Deleuze believes in “the possibility of a new postmodern mode of existence where individuals overcome repressive modern forms of identity and stasis to become desiring nomads in a constant process of becoming and transformation”. Forced by my physical reactions to self pleasure I aimed to criticise the social norms of sexuality as a private affair and something to be ashamed of expressing outwardly. The artworks were made over a few days in a dimly lit room, encouraging me to avoid concentrating on the form of the artwork and focus on the process of making it instead. With my physical senses I attempted to reach a moment of clarity, a spark of inspiration and a rush of ecstasy which would in turn create a true expression of using my desire as a tool of production. Looking at the works chronologically, there is a progression from less detailed to more intricate. This symbolises the development of understanding of my desire, connecting myself through my body to the artwork and separating my consciousness from social structure and personal anxiety.
In each piece I wrote the title of the work and included my name to celebrate the ability to showcase pride in sexual identity and promote expression of desires, whether frowned upon or not. By naming myself in the piece I aim to promote my expression of desire and prove the empowerment of self acceptance. I aim for the viewer to engage with the piece as a poster promoting self exploration. I chose to have them presented formally in frames focus on the paradox of formal structure versus the taboo theme. As the action of creating the images is the main focus of the artwork, I encourage viewers to reflect on their own desires and look at them subjectively without the influence of anxieties forced upon by political and social norms.
“With its throttling, its stasis, its lesions, its neuroses, the capitalist state imposes its norms, establishes its models, imprints its features, assigns its roles, propagates its program… Using every available access route into our organisms, it insinuates into the depths of our insides its roots of death. It usurps our organs, disrupts our vital functions, mutilates our pleasure, subjugates all lived experience to the control of its condemning judgments. It makes of each individual a cripple, cut off from his or her body, a stranger to his or her own desires.” - Felix Guattari
