Deeper Writing of ED Theme

My mind has been completely full of my newfound ownership; that I am making art about my eating disorder, and I can represent it in any way I want.  For almost the entirety of my eating disorder and recovery prior to now, I have made art about “it” without knowing that “it” is what the art was really about. From my “whole girls” drawings to my painting of a carousel, I refused to address the root of the pain and inspiration. Finally naming it as the source of almost all of my recent art has been liberating. I am challenging myself to be innovative and secretive in the form of my work while being very explicit about its content when I discuss it.

Talking to Ruby has been an essential part of this brainstorming process. She suggested that I create this word-map that shows how expansive my conceptualization is of eating disorders so that I can see all of the space that exists for me to make art inside of.

I have made two works recently that I think are both very successful beginnings of this investigation of how I can authentically but also curiously represent my eating disorder and recovery. The first project is my video Water Talk. I was more interested in the visuals and wrote the spoken word aspect in about 2 minutes because those words are a part of me they were easy to regurgitate. I think the most important part of this film is the end where I explode out of the water, hinting to recovery. Even more interesting is the idea of sexuality, and I wonder how does sexuality interact with ideas of eating disorders? They are obviously related but I want to mine deeper about how.

After much discussion with Ruby, I sat and thought deeply about how to challenge myself and be experiential. I thought about how trusting others in my art is something I have almost never done. I also do not usually explicitly include food in my work. Combining these elements, I had Maya feed me while we were both blindfolded to create my Dinnertime Happening. An important thing Maya brought up during our discussion after the happening is that I am not making art about spiraling deeper, I am making work about me trying to claw myself out of this hole and recover. The happening had a sense of play and mothering which was really positive for both of us.

The happening was messy and kind of gross which made it more interesting to me.

Going forward I want to create more happenings, as well as creating visceral and tactile pieces. I want to play and punch things and be wild in my art so that I can find out about how I make art and why I do. I think I need to look a little deeper inside of myself to see what is going on, but not let that prevent me from going with my gut. I am very excited.

 

I have been thinking about it literally all the time, and I have tried to record it with this chart but need to be mroe on top of it. I know I have done more than this.

Here are some other things I have been ruminating on

  • Can an eating disorder be separated conceptually from its context (being a woman/ living in america/ the news)?
    • If no how can that be shown in art?
  • What about typical/ therapeutic eating disorder art turns me off? Why is it so repetitive?
    • What is it about representing recovery is different from representing the spiral?
  • Why is eating disorder art so hard to find? Is it actually more common than I think but just less explicit?

 

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