Field group work: Fairytales, Sexual Assault and Trump.

Me and my group of three joined our Inside/Outside themes and ideas, which were sexual assault, feminism and fairytales. We came up with using fruit because they are used as metaphors in fairytales such as Snow White as well as metaphors for purity and sin, which corresponded with misogyny and assault because people who are assaulted are portrayed as having their innocence and purity taken away from them. We used the purity and sin of an apple to sit on top of a white plinth because both are elevated in life as well as stories. We then circled the plinth with bananas which had facts and quotes written on them: facts about sexual assault and rape, and misogynistic quotes from politicians. This worked really well because the writing on the bananas turned black, which could then be seen as a metaphor for how the words are rotten.

We then joined with another group and added the theme of mental illness to our work. We only took the bananas from our work in order to do this because bananas have a protected layer/skin over it which could be a metaphor for hiding one’s mental breakdown or illness. We also wanted to use the bananas as phallic imagery and made a short video of us bashing the bananas with a hammer and added red paint to look like blood. This was meant to represent the perpetrator becoming the victim, as the phallic imagery represented the politicians who’ve said horrific things concerning assault, as well as having cases filed against them. We then nailed the three bananas up on the wall against a white background and played the film on a projector in the background;

We then decided to develop this but in a very different, simpler way, as we felt that our final piece had already reached a conclusion. We wanted to fill a room full of bananas and an effective way of doing this would be by using paper and cardboard. We wanted the metaphor of the banana to be in your face by using numbers. Here’s how it turned out;