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

I Am What I Am: The Body (Un)Comfortable

Paul Marcus Fuog is known for his work that intersects the space between art and design. His work spans various mediums including video, sculpture and object making, drawing, performance, still-life photography and text-based works.
Favouring the vernacular of the everyday, Paul uses common elements including language, tools and materials and rearranges them to find new meanings. He performs documented experiments where he sets the parameters and then relinquishes control, encouraging variables that are outside the realm of his consciousness. 

"I look the way I look, because of the way I think"

This particular piece reflects the outcomes of which I hope to reach through my space intervention. How do my actions affect myself and in turn how do my actions affect the others around me. Why and how does this happen and what if the situation were different.

The other approach could also be how my inner thoughts as presented to me during my formative years have now changed my personality or helped it develop, and they way that I now think and perceive things.  

"I think the way I think because of the way I look"

This is particularly important for this project because people have spent their time judging other and forcing their views on the other people, they now have a perception of what they should do, look like and act. Is this right, is this how society is expected to be and if so why or why not?

&Kathrynwhat

Don't believe everything the internet tells you, unless it's me, then you can.

The other day, during my usual Blog Stalk, I read a really nice review of the Chinese place that just opened down the road form me, and being an enormous fan of Chow Fan, I thought I'd check it out on my way home.

The small shop was dark and the counter was cluttered with a mixture of chopstick, straws and pot plants, there was an awkward early family dinner that looked like it consisted of a Step Dad trying his hardest to win over the kids. The waitress gingerly took our order, the crumpled menu looked over used and slightly confusing,. She scribbled a few notes and went through th edoor at the back of the shop while the awkward step dad asked for a little more soy sauce and the little girl cringed her face at the taste. I sat near the door, waiting patiently for the food to arrive. The table was neatly set up, the green chopsticks standing out in stark contrast from the dark wood table. Mismatched chairs scraped against the floor as the sun slowly set over the chilly winters day, the parking lot slowly being plunged into the darkness of the night. One by one the street lamps lit up the sky.

Look, it was all right, not the best and not the worst - I've had some pretty dodge Chinese Food in my life time, and that's in four different cities spread across two continents and multiple restaurants, but I gotta say, I wasn't all that impressed.
My Spling Lols were burnt and there was hardly any Chicken in my Chow Fan. Now, it might have been a bad day and maybe I'll have to go back and have a second try of this place but it was super disappointing at the time, especially since I really, really wanted some delicious dinner times.

Then I found these
Ramen Overload: Source

Mmm. Looks so goood.
&Kathrynwhat

Mom Time

My Mom is really cool and really funny. She's one of the most creative people I know, and I probably owe a lot to her in terms of well, my existence.

She was a Graphic Designer and super cool and hip back in the day - sometimes she even lets me wear her cool and hip clothes from the 70's which is always fun. 

Every Sunday and some Saturdays she goes to some embroidery classes and does all sorts of cool stuff, maybe Ill put some pics up when its all done.

Sometimes we go shopping together for more cotton because you can never have too many brightly coloured threads to make magic embroidery with.

Yay! My Mom is better than your Mom. Don't even try and deny it.

Moms are great.
You should appreciate
them
(oh rhymes.)
&Kathrynwhat

Teen Angst and Other Stories

Petra Collins has just started her first Solo Exhibition in Manhattan, and while that's a really faraway reality for me as a South African I've seen a bunch of her works all over the internet in recent weeks. By 21 she's done so much and is making a big name for herself and its kinda making me feel inadequate and has sent me spiralling down that all too familiar road of Self Doubt and Existential Crisis's. I am Jacks own self hatred.
It hasn't helped that we've been studying the Gendered image of people in the media - which included a lot of weird movies with people either being really violent or creepy.

I've read a lot about what Collins has to say about her work, which has been in the making since she was 15 and so depicts the trials and tribulations of growing up as a woman and struggling with sexuality and identity in a world that has already made up your mind for you in a sense. It really is hard being a girl, and especially one that doesn't meat the 'Norms' of society.

"Discharge", her first Solo Exhibition is a documentation of what it's like to be a young teenage girl growing up in a Social Mediated society and what it means to be struggling with your sexuality and with the idea of womanhood in modern life.
*Click on the images for a better viewing mode.

Collins has been met with much controversy over her works (like her Vagina TShirt design for American Apparel and her Instagram pictures) and has been trying to make a way for Women in Art to really be heard and have their works showcased in a predominantly male dominated sect of the Cultural world. She has started an initiative, about 3 years ago now, called: The Ardonous. You can read more about it here, and see some of the works by featured female artists as well. Its flipping fantastic to see the different interpretations of what it means to be young and female in this world and in a society that has pretty much been based on hiding away from the world as soon as you've reached puberty.

I pretty much wanna be her because she has no fear and I wish I had that quality within me.
Yup.
Petra Collins e'rybody.

&Kathrynwhat