I recently attended The Mind The Gap Conference in Lisbon Portugal. I presented my practice and the components of my research. My practice has shifted in the last two years to look closely at how the performance of the body is an integral aspect of my research. Through the making of sculpture installation I am questioning how thought and movement are interconnected; through the senses and specifically how women's experience is expressed and enacted as a form of knowledge.
One of the questions from the panel after my presentation that keeps ringing in my ears was, "why woman? why not just you as an artist?" This was a good question. I am genuinely interested in the social, political and cultural position of women.
The absence and marginalization of women throughout history and philosophy compels me to enact something that brings the specific sensual, sexual and sentient qualities of women that has long been identified with the body, an authority and a voice that distinguishes both power and vulnerability.
This will be an answer that I continue to develop through my research. It remains a tension within Feminism and Phenomenology. Tension, being a key word, an active state, something that exists in the theory and the practice both.
http://www.ccwgraduateschool.org/mind-the-gap-the-artist-in-culture-studies/