This autoethnographic illustration practice comes with a trigger warning as it explores poor body image experience and eating disorders within the childhood home.
Audience discretion is advised.
Autoethnography is where a writer or illustrator/artist uses their personal experience as a way to critique broader cultural experiences and contribute to research.
These object illustrations are part of my practice-based PhD research at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University. Porcelain and anti-aesthetics are used to illustrate the multidimensions of my identity; a working class, white, cis-gendered, non-physically disabled, heterosexual woman. Anti-aesthetics is used to decenter the artist, and although this work illustrates my personal experience, the politics of gender, racism, classism, and colonialism significantly shape my experience in the world.
The object illustrations focus on the childhood home, the power dynamics, the intergenerational conversations and attitudes to women’s bodies in relation to western cultural discourse. The contested environment of the home, middle class sensibilities leading to an idealised version of reality, where secrets hide in the shadows, and sometimes in plain sight.
Through a series of Conversation Café inspired engagements with groups of women*, these object illustrations will be conduits to generate critical discussion on western body image discourse, the racist roots of western ideals, and how these filter into transgenerational body image experiences in the home. These engagements are provisionally called Craftivist Clay sessions as I aim to publish the model for others using art-based practices and methodologies to adopt and adapt.
If you are affected by the issues raised by this work, please reach out to:
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals.
Between Matter and Words exhibition | Paragon Studios | 4 - 13 August 22 | Belfast
Photograph courtesy of Philip Arneill
https://www.philiparneill.com/
Between Matter and Words exhibition | Paragon Studios | 4 - 13 August 22 | Belfast
Between Matter and Words
Photograph courtesy of Philip Arneill
Philip Arneill
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals.
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals.
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals.
Porcelain, glaze, ceramic decals.
Between Matter and Words exhibition | Paragon Studios | 4 - 13 Aug 22 | Belfast
Photograph courtesy of Philip Arneill
Handbuilt porcelain, underglaze and glaze.