Etam Cru - Aht Beyond the Canvass

 Last night I was just casually scrolling through the internet as one does and I came across the most amazing picture. Graffiti drawn on a wall of a beautiful lady in a jam jar. I am her now.
So, this morning I did a little snooping around the rest of the web and discovered the amazing artworks of the Etam Cru (Etam, Sainer and Bezt). Comprised of three amazing artists that comb the streets painting their whimsical characters and scenes among the dreary everyday houses, of what looks like Spain. heir work is vast and beautiful. You can see some of my favourites from the three artist below but you can check them out here and see for yourself.

 

mmm such pretty. so inspired.
I want these on mugs actually.

&Kathrynwhat

Foodbelly: The Body (Un)Comfortable

This is Lee Price and she painte really realistic paintings of people and food.

I eally like her work, and have chosen to showcase it in my Space Intervention of 10 days (You can read more about my space intervention here) because it directly deals with how we deal with our body and our emotions. While I couldn't find much about Lee Price and why she paints people eating in baths, I have made some of my own conclusions about her work. 

To me, this is a very accurate representation of how I personally treat my body, and while its not in a bath, I do spend all my free time in my bed. My bed is my safe space, where no one can go but me. It is all mine and I can do with that space what I want - in this case, fill my inner space with food. This is a topic that I specifically relate to because of my relationship with food, and how it has morphed and moulded over the years to what it is today (even though it is still pretty up and down).

Each of her art works has a different emotion attached to it - happiness, boredom, sadness, over whelmed, pleasure, apathy - and each has a specific reaction in terms of how to resolve these issues, the most popular choice being solitude and comfort food.

In my coming interventions I will be exploring the importance of food and its effect on my space and my body. How are communal meals different from ones alone na dhow are meals because you're hungry different from those when you just want to enjoy the food. These are all very different ideals on how food influences your personal and immediate space and the effect it has on the way that you then appreciate or adapt space.

Out of Sight - A Critical (Studies) Look: The Body (Un)Comfortable

An internal struggle often goes unnoticed - we see this every day with more and more people struggling with depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia. These kinds of mental states can often be shoved off or not taken seriously enough, while most of the time not noticed at all. We as a generation have to start standing up to this and trying to make a difference. The media an especially Gossip Media is just one of the issues surrounding this topic. We need to start taking responsibility for ourselves and not taking what the media has to say blindly. 

These photographs by Laura Zankoul are picturesque scenes of avoidance and an escapism from the horrors of everyday life when suffering from one of these diseases. She captures the whimsical essence of what it must be like to have to fight with your inner self and you mind on a daily basis.

Laura Zankoul’s practice of fine arts photography primarily appeared as a need to escape the binding life of the cubicle during her first full-time job. This need to evade reality was translated in her imagery: her compositions are contemporary fairy tales, which explore the charm and mystery of the human psyche. Whimsical and playful, they represent an attempt to invent new worlds, to push against the boundaries of our reality and escape the monotony of everyday life. The characters inhabiting Zankoul’s work are anonymous and timeless, universal symbols existing within a fantastical and surreal landscape.

Tea Cups, is one of her collections, where the heroine is trapped, yet transported to a whimsical land of imagination and wonder through the Giant Tea Cup. It is a place to hide and yet a place to dream of all the wonderful imaginings that a person could dream of. While filled with many opportunities the outcomes could be detrimental and unwelcome.

The Unseen, a collection of conceptual photographs the perfectly embody the notion of having ones self always half hidden, being unable to reveal the truth because it is too much for you or others to bare. It symbolises fear and hardship of what you are afraid of sharing, while sometimes what is hidden is positive, when one cannot express this, the deep seated anger and fear often can over whelm the holder of such a precious secret making it increasingly hard to reveal and work through it.

&Kathrynwhat