It's complete! I wasn't sure to start with whether I wanted to have the piece introduced in my last post on its own, esp. as the second piece proved rather more difficult, but now that it's found its form I see they are good together. (You can't quite discern from the photograph that there's no opening for a head to push through, that I've made little pockets where the armpits would be and that the straps have been crocheted as tubes.)
It's more clear to me now too how much this piece is about puberty, that time-span when our bodies seem to hurtle from one change to another and we can't quite keep up, when we are torn between wanting to throw ourselves into life and its contingencies and hiding in our bedrooms, between boldness and brassiness and excruciating embarrassment, between thinking we know it all and being utterly flummoxed by being in the world.
A friend of mine who popped in this week burst out laughing when she saw the piece. She remembered menstrual pads the size of aircraft runways and so do I (yes, we're of that age!), pads which weighed heavily in our pants and felt as inconspicuous as if a dayglow arrow was hovering in front of us and pointing at our shame. Yes, shame is the instrumental word. The only good thing was to be exempt from PE once per month and allowed to sit on a bench at the side instead of being bullied by the teacher. I'm sad for us in retrospect but also wonder how much things have changed. Smaller pads, tampons, yes, but menstruation still has to be invisible. And scentless. The funny thing is it's something I hadn't thought of at all when I made the piece: my starting point was a more general feeling of awkwardness - the strangeness of being embodied (at all times, but especially during puberty), but I'm delighted that M. was thrown into recall and took me along with her.
I also think there's more to be seen in the piece, but leave that up to you!
Growing pains
Dimensions: 25 cm x 50 cm and 24.5 cm x 44 cm
Materials: crocheted from a virgin wool/polyester mixture
5 comments:
I don't know how you do it, but you take up some material, in this case some (lovely) yarn and you create the equivalent of an entire book, a film, a novel a lifetime of experience, an all night conversation, in one piece of work. How is it possible? This work expresses to me also the awkwardness of adolescence, but also the pride of growing up. Perhaps also there is the ongoing relationship that we have with our bodies across all our years. I know also from having had the joy of seeing your work in the real world that there is so much more for this work to say that can only be read by seeing the crochet and yarn up close, a picture really doesn't say it all with your work.
Just wonderful.
You are a huge inspiration you know....
Thanks so much, Susan! For me the piece is about beauty and pride and wonder too. Our bodies are puzzling, amazing, and ever-changing and we've got a lot to do to keep up with them at any age, I think.
i love that they are made from virgin wool.
with the pairing of the adorable bralette, i also see the innocence of adolescence...but is there also the flip side of the beauty and wonder being violated and oppressed? i see that in the elongation of the panties and the closed-up bra...
Mien, I'm trying to get to the ambiguity of it all, so there's beauty and wonder and shyness and fear and disgust and hope and more. I guess our bodies are doing what they do and the rest is about rules and attitudes, which society is suffused with, dictates and (re)produces and which we maybe don't think enough about. Wow, that's a big statement, too general, but maybe you know what I mean?
And the virgin wool-thing made me chuckle too. I only realised when I looked at the label while writing my post.
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