Sunday, May 18, 2014

Some Thoughts on: YOUR DAUGHTER EPITOMIZES KANYE LYRICS

This is the first piece I created that formed my second body of work:  DAUGHTERS


Things are not often what they seem, and behind every stereotype, there is a real and tangible human.  We have conditioned the youth to desire wealth and fame, molding them into perfect consumers.  And in the name of that pursuit, everything is exploitable.

Yes, ok, fine.  It was Eve who bit the apple...   Placed here, it becomes so very many things, but in lieu of writing an entire essay right now (as i am still trying to understand it fully myself), I will make these two observations:  

The shame and guilt associated with being the sex that got us kicked out of the garden (which is not entirely how i see it, but again, another time and place), has historically worked to control, manipulate, and exploit women.  You don't think so? Explain the story of Eve and the apple to a little girl, tell her that if Eve hadn't done that we'd still be kickin' it in the Garden of Eden.  Then ask her how she feels about Eve, what she thinks of her.  As the little girl grows up and becomes a young woman, that story takes on new meaning.  It has been at play in the depths of her consciousness all the while, and as she becomes a woman she somewhere also then identifies with Eve.  Use religion as a conduit to disseminate these stories to the masses, and ta-da! You've got centuries of persecution, rape and slavery all in the name of our heavenly father.


Then there is the more obvious reasoning behind its inclusion. As we live and breath today there are millions upon millions of us who automatically know exactly where this sticker came from and can identify it. In hundreds of years, when we are all dead and gone, this large heavy chunk of plastic will be unearthed, still in tact. The eyes that observe it will not see 'a macintosh sticker.' They will see a symbol that will tell them so much more about us than just another apple. They will see the dawn of the digital age as the those first rays of light filtered through our collective experiences. They will see how we were first consumed by it, and how even though innovation was moving us forward, we had not yet learned the consequences of allowing so much of our experience of the physical world to be digitized and instant.


Very hard, if impossible to see, unless in person, the text from which i ultimately derived the title is partially visible in this detail:  '...i ain't sayin' she a gold digga...'

Placed high on the hip, as close to the 'ass' as i could get it, the rectangular smudge of black ink in the center of the frame is an upside down stamp, branding the figure as 'Approved'


I have always believed matter to hold more energy than we tend to give it credit for.  This detail reveals an entire layer of text that was built into the piece beneath the image.  The brochure for the hotel, a brief history of Bora Bora, plane tickets, receipts, tags, etc. i had collected while there. I had no idea what they would become part of then, i just knew i needed to hold on to them.


And no exploitation of the female form is now complete in the western world without paying homage to the company that first taught us to hook 'em while they're young!

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