Fucked up by Theory

I never curse. Well, in some ocassions but rarely. However, I am currently writing not talking so I will allow myself to do whatever I feel is appropriate given the context. I have been fucked up by Theory. Grad school was a time to foreplay with it, but I never had the time to go any deeper than that. This, speaking almost literally because I actually believe that foreplay can be the real thing.
No Freud allowed.
This morning when I was looking for my writings before I became pregnant, I found this:
What would a Post-Modern relationship be described as? If Post- Modernism is the critique of meta-narratives/dominant narratives as I think the concept of love is, what would a mundane relationship between 2 people be?
Also, What is Jean Broudillard saying about our contemporary world when he says that everything happens in front of us? Media doesn't allow us to perceive time as a lineal occurence. Everything happens at the same time, there is no sense of history. History is something lineal but post-modernism doesn't buy that. Identity is for example, taken as an ongoing process, something that happens continuously. If this is the case, history doesn't matter. History doesn't determine who you are.
Recently, John talked about continuity as the basic to develop a sense of trust. How can trust be built if there is no continuity? isn't there trust another meta-narrative? (pair that with love).
If I understand correctly, we do not need to trust people. If people do not buy meta-narratives, they would be more honest to what they are and what they are would be determined by their experiences and most would be on the surface. All the selves that we have would cease to exist.
Am I going bananas here?

Coming Back

The truth is that there is no truth. I have destroyed any evidence of the past leaving this blog with barely 4 entries and none dated before 2007. Considering I began writing in 2006, I have killed my beginnings. Only the things we see(read) exist, and I did not want my persona of 2006 to continue existing. I do that with the past that is why I am only 25.
Self. When stuck, it is always good to go back to the self. When I was an undergrad student at AU, a prof. told me that if I ever got stuck with a blank canvas in ront of me, I should go back to nature and re-connect by drawing. Observation drawing using only a pencil. Now that I have begun to recapitulate my thesis statement and go forward with my Art making I will start by drawing my self.
I have to re-connect with my self, get to align my thoughts with who I am in the outside. They no longer go together. By doing this, I hope to go beyond the image, I hope to connect the inner with the outer or maybe discover that the whole is actually separated anyways.
Part by part I'll re-construct my self again, as a point of departure. Unfortunately I intellectualize everything, even the food I digest, but drawing will put me back to the basics. Intellectualize later please.

THe latest stuff

This is the Latest piece I am working on. This one, along with 2 more, will be part of my thesis exhibition in mid- April. For this one, I am requesting the participation of others. I ask that voluntarily they come to my studio for a painting session where I will get to mix paint trying to match their skin tone and they will do the same with mine. So far, I have had 12 people participating in the project but ideally, it will be 25. I do not know if I'll get to that number.
The conceptual part of the piece relates to the idea of race being an illussion. an illusion that sometimes we use as boundaries. Our skin becomes a boundarie. I'll give more details on this issue later on.



(From left to right: Seth, Cosmo and Jay. )

Time has come

And finally, there I go.....

Piece at my last MICA Show

This piece is called "How was your day". I used natural hair for the final installation on a wooden table from Ikea. The idea here is to represent 2 people that apparently have a relationship and are sitting at opposite sides of the table. The coldness of the table and the emptiness of it are deliverately used to state a very stale relationship, or a relationship that has grown a distance, a critical space between the 2. I am using hair as my only choice to represent 2 people. The gender of this 2 people is non important so the hair is presented in a similar configuaration (as placemats) where the only difference is the amount.
This piece won't be part of my thesis but I chose this for the show, because it represents my departure to a more concept based work.

Arte y Mercado

Arte y Mercado It's a web page in Spanish that serves as a connector between artisits and curators or else. And the cool thing is that my request for HELP in one of my many art projects is there! It was a surprise to find it there and Iam glad about it.
Another thing I wanted to talk about is the fact that I did not go to the Venice Biennial. What a bummer right? I just could not travel for 3 days only. Instead, I bought the Biennial catalogue which was as expensive as a flight ticket to Venice, but it was worth it. It is a cool book.
I'll be telling about my new projects very soon.

After centuries of not Posting

I have been reading a lot and therefore unable to come up with a solid argument about anything. As much as I can, I try to document my entries so, now that I am in the middle of shifting my art making process, I felt I needed time to read and digest the readings. I have grown fond of Post-Structuralist Thinkers and Deconstruction so, In the quest for understanding more about Gender issues I am reading or have read Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. I have finished "Gender Trouble" and I am in the middle of "Bodies that Matter". Judith Butler, after Michel Foucault, is the precursor in Queer Theory. Even before, during my veiled years, I had the feeling that there was something wrong with the idea of genders, nobody is 100% femenine or 100% masculine, I was aware of a gender fluidity that I liked to foster. This gender fluidity will make us all Queer. Another book I have in my must read list is: "Fear of a Queer planet" but because I am tangently interested in it, I do not own it, it is from my school's library.
This fluidity that is so positive in gender issues, should also be fostered in terms of race. There is when thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha come to the picture. Just as Gender, the idea of Nation, or Race is a construction. Said that, we have an identity that is all a construction, made out with ingredients such as history and cultural traditions as well as by our parents. In a way, we are sort of the "conceptual" piece of our parents. Only they did not do it consciously, many things were transmitted to them and some where even hardwired in their minds and passed on to us.
The parent brach of all these thinkers is Jacques Derrida. So far, I have only read Of Grammatology, one of his most seminal writings and which was translated from French to English by Gayatri Spivak. In my queue of books then, are "The Spivak reader" edited by Donna Landry and "A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present." From Homi Bhabha I have: The Location of Culture.
Another Post-Structuralist also influenced by Derrida is Edward Said. I have already read Orientalism a must for anybody willing to understand how people create their own image of "the other". I am also currently reading "Out of Place", Which is Said's memoirs of his life in the East and West and how both worlds shaped his life. I find many paralels between his experiences and mine. Altough I come from a "westernized" environment, I realize this "western" way of living has been enbedded in a country with native customs I don't even know about.
On top of all that, I am mentalizing myself about possible motherhood, so Iam also reading a lot about it. I just finished a book from Spanish writer Lucia Etchebarria "Milagro en Equilibrio" and I was pleasently surprised to read her references to Derrida. The book is writen as a long letter to her just born daughter, and she tells the story of her life and all before her conception. It is supposed to be fictional, but I can see many of herself in it.
On top top of that, I am "doing" my artwork. I just started distributing disposable cameras to my friends. They are required to document their routine everyday. The idea behind is to find simmilarities among us more than differences. At the end all of us have been constructed similarly. I aim to expose that.