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 collonialism 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 Cafés 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.
If you are affected by the issues raised by this work, please reach out to:
all the work that is done,
from all directions.
pass gently two
or three times over her eyelids.
may i open my eyes please,
I’ll promise to believe whatever you tell me.
she repeated.
(2022) earthenware, underglaze, underglaze pencil, glaze, ceramic decals.
feeling a little ashamed
and so dreadfully big;
a little frightened.
tears slowly trickled down her aged
cheeks.
a little girl’s eyes saw.
the dear child is fast
grown
(2022) earthenware, underglaze, underglaze pencil, glaze, ceramic decals.
the little girl was worn out
her eyes were so occuoied
and pretending to be
I do think it
would be nicer to be a butterfly than a little girl
There was going to be a change
May she grow up as good, if not quite as beautiful-
she set herself to hear.
(2022) earthenware, underglaze, underglaze pencil, glaze, ceramic decals.
(2021-22) earthenware, underglaze, glaze.