The Grotesque Female has become the main topic for many female artists, as it explores everything taboo and inherently sexist; exaggeration, hyperbole, and expressiveness are all key elements of the grotesque style. Certain aspects of the body are referenced when talking about the grotesque. These things include elements of the body that either protrude from the body or a part of the body that can be entered, which is a direct link to women’s bodies in particular. This is because the body in many cases is seen as pure where as the outside world is not. Therefore, parts of the body that allow the outside world in or allow elements inside the body out, are seen and used as an exaggeration of the grotesque.
Bakhtin explained how the grotesque body is a celebration of the cycle of life: the grotesque body is a comic figure of profound ambivalence: its positive meaning is linked to birth and renewal and its negative meaning is linked to death and decay. Frances Connelly, a well known art historian, describes the grotesque as “a boundary creature”, which is what I’ve hopefully achieved in my projections.
In the Medieval Grotesque Carnival, emphasis is put on the nether regions of the body as the centre and creation of meaning. The spirit rather than coming from above comes from the belly, buttocks, and genitals, which is what I’ve tried to re-create in my art by using representations of these exact body parts through food.
In her influential 1982 essay “Powers of Horror”, Julia Kristeva developed the term ‘abject’ to explore the human reaction to the fragmented, decayed or impure human body. The abject refers to the horror felt in response to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the boundaries between self and other, the loss of a sense of self.
ORLAN is a contemporary French artist known for the radical act of changing her appearance with plastic surgery in the name of art. Similar to the self-portraits of Cindy Sherman, ORLAN uses her face and body as malleable tools for shifting identities. “I have been the first artist to use aesthetic surgery in another context—not to appear younger or better according to the designated pattern. I wanted to disrupt the standards of beauty,” she explained.
I’m hugely interested in the monstrous aspect of her performance work, as well as her portrayal as famous figures of women, such as Venus in her Incidental Striptease series. This links to my monstrous women chapter in my dissertation, where I look into characters such as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl and Villanelle in Killing Eve, who are both monstrous women who are both empowering and valid feminist characters of women. My aim has been to translate this inspiration onto my work, and delved into how I can transform my body into the fetishised foods that often visually describe our body parts.
Back in August 2016, I saw Louise Bourgeois‘ work at the Tate Modern, who often deals with the grotesque. Highlighting her late work, the exhibition included an outstanding group of works including Couple I 1996, Cell XIV (Portrait) 2000, and Eyes 2001-5. This lead me to look at her for this year’s project, and use her drawings especially to influence my new works. This drawing and sculpture in particular intrigued me;
The pieces appears to be a half pineapple, half woman, which actually sparked a few ideas relating to my work based on the fetishisation of food and women. The “forms” of much of Bourgeois’ work have this formless quality in two ways: in some cases, what we see appears to be something which doesn’t exist, such as the house-woman. In some cases, the biomorphic resemblances are made to male and female organs united in a single form (this has been described as “organ-logic”), or to a mixture of interior and exterior spaces united in a way that makes the interior seem to be outside and the exterior seem to be inside. Other qualities which are usually distinct and separate appear united or fused so that Bourgeois’ work has no location or position in terms of standard categories or in terms of art.
These pieces sparked looking into textured/relief paintings again, particularly looking into making women into the forms of the food they are sexualised to look like – such as the emojis we use during sexting.
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