Interdisciplinary artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores is a wanderer caught between two worlds. Raised in a rural town in Jalisco, Mexico, and later immigrating to the United States, Jiménez-Flores makes art that pulls at the consciousness of migration, colonialism, and notions of “the other.” “I have learned to adapt and live in these two worlds,” he says, “but adapting involves expanding and losing part of who I am. I will never be fully ‘American,’ and I am not entirely Mexican anymore. I am too pocho to my paisanos; like a foreigner, I do not have a motherland.”

You note that by being bicultural and bilingual, you live concurrently in two different worlds, and are a foreigner in both. How do these worlds intersect, and in what ways do you feel the divide?

There is a popular phrase in Spanish: “¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!” This phrase refers to the curse of Mexico for its geographic proximity to the United States. The United States and the media have created the perception that anything south of the U.S. border is substandard, or what some people call “America’s backyard,” referring to traditional areas of dominance in Latin America. These notions have inflicted generational traumas upon Latinos, and we often end up believing these impressions, feeling inferior to U.S. citizens. Many U.S. citizens, or “Americans,” also believe that they are superior to Latinos and other minority groups. As a new immigrant, I experienced the feelings of second-class citizenship and accepted a position of inferiority. It was through education and art that I realized that these are socially constructed impressions, which I have overcome.

By moving between rasquache art and high art, what narratives do you feel you are able to tell in one form or another?

Rasquache in Spanish means “leftover” or “of no value.” Rasquachismo, or rasquache art, describes an attitude or lifestyle of the underdog that uses assemblage or found object techniques in sculpture. As an artist, I feel that I am constantly improvising and problem solving. As a consequence, I am interested in the rasquache aesthetics of working with what is around and to what kind of facilities or space I have access to make art. High art, on the other hand, is more about the conventional way we validate art through the context of the white cube. By going between these two aesthetics, I hope my work is more relatable to museums and collectors,
as well as the immigrant farmer who can relate to my stories. In my view, neither is less or more.

Tell us about your development of rasquache-futuristic aesthetics in your work.

Through mainstream media and in most sci-fi content, the future is generally imagined as white. People of color have been erased from the future altogether. My latest research is about exploring and developing a rasquache-futuristic aesthetic in my artwork through which I could articulate pre-Columbian, colonial, and postcolonial histories. This would allow me to imagine and create a future in which the protagonist looks like me and understands me, and others can relate as well. I want to take risks and work with new media that will foster my community-based work, and make rasquache-futurism a reality. The act of resistance starts when we fight against those who try to stop us from being what we can become. Through art, I seek to resist the labels placed on me and other people of color by reimagining what an alternative future could look like.

As artist-in-residence for the city of Boston, have you experienced any key moments that have shaped your work? What have your goals been as an artist and a teacher?

My art practice is driven by community engagement, social justice, and accessibility in the arts. I believe strongly in the value of creativity and how it improves our life experiences. It is my personal goal to empower and raise questions through art to cultivate conversations about the issues that affect our communities. The Boston AIR has been a great reminder of the importance of working with youth, playing the role of an educator, and bringing creativity and art to where it’s needed.

This residency has been a great opportunity for my artistic growth. I am taking risks and trying new ideas; most importantly, this has been a win-win situation for everyone in the Boston Centers for Youth & Families organization, Josiah Quincy School, and me. Coming into this residency, I knew that key characteristics to being successful in this project were patience and flexibility. The first step was to learn more about the community and see what is already available there, ask questions about what is needed, and then try to use art as a connector to create awareness and develop actions.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores–artist
Boston, Massachusetts
Website

Top image: Salvador Jiménez-Flores, The Resistance of the Hybrid Cacti, detail, 2017, terra cotta. Photo by Salvador Jiménez-Flores

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Soft layers of ochre, gray, and muted pastels float across Laura Bedard’s mixed media paintings. For any science lover, her work is reminiscent of illuminated cells under a microscope, or a glance through a telescope into deep space. Her work, she notes, are “micro-universes: tributes to the celestial, as well as biological.”

“I am fascinated by the inner-workings of the body and the micro-universes that inhabit it,” she says. “As a child I loved looking at outer space. It was an obsession for me. Have you ever seen the wing of a housefly magnified before? It is so beautiful. It’s amazing to me that life breaks down into little universes all around us.”

Bedard’s obsession with science and astronomy began as a child, growing up near the ocean in Plymouth, Massachusetts. An avid fan of National Geographic, she began to illustrate her various areas of interest—the cosmos, deep sea creatures, and dinosaurs that have long been extinct. Equipped with a telescope and a microscope, Bedard investigated the various mysteries of the universe while also intensifying her interest in becoming an artist. Although her artistic interests waned away from the sciences through her undergraduate education, her interest in living organisms and microscopic landscapes reemerged while she pursued her MFA at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Ages, 2015, 16” x 28,” inks, acrylics, collage on paper.

Unlike the vivid landscapes of space and microorganism photography, Bedard’s work is delicate and dreamlike. By layering acrylics and inks from a combination of painting and then printmaking, she is able to wipe away layers, creating depth and soft shapes while forming her own micro-universes of layered material and texture. Starting from yellow ochres, Bedard says she utilizes warmer bases so that her paintings “look like they have a pulse. I want the micro universes to reflect an aliveness to them.”

Normal #2, 2017,10” x13,” Inks, acrylic paint, collage on paper

Her newest series Eclipse bursts with intense golden hues and small details clusters of ambiguous micro-organisms. The paintings, she says, are “reminiscent of the atmosphere within our bodies and the beauty within each of us.”

Now living in New Bedford, Massachusetts with her husband and two children, her family continues the tradition of investment in scientific inquiry. “My daughter loves science experiments,” she says. “She is always asking me if we can blow things up.” Bedard spends her time balancing time in her studio and exploring with her children.

Laura Bedard–multi-media artist
New Bedford, Massachusetts
Website

Top image: Untitled, 2009, 17” x 11”, charcoal, inks. All photos courtesy of Laura Bedard. 

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Henniker, New Hampshire’s Youdhi Maharjan unfolds new eternities between hidden words and displaced punctuation, meticulously reconstructing old books rescued from thrift stores. Maharjan doesn’t make art to evoke feelings or unveil some grander purpose. It is in the painstaking process of reconstruction, of meaningless repetition and rediscovery, that he finds higher truth. “Art for me does not have purpose,” he says. “There is no hope, there is no emotion in my work, there are no politics. Art for me is just a process where I can hide away to quiet my mind.”

Beginning with inspiration from a book’s title and a simple rule, Maharjan moves through the text, disassembling it. In Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Maharjan erased every word, leaving only periods behind. In other texts he may leave a word or letter, connecting what is left behind through lines or shapes. “In the process, I experience a different kind of eternity, the sweet kind, that lasts for few material moments but feels like forever,” he explains.

Youdhi Maharjan, Of Murmuring Streams, 2017, text cutout on book pages, 40 x 3.35 in. each. Photo by Youdhi Maharjan

After being introduced to Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Maharjan became deeply rooted in notions of a Sisyphean eternity, the “monotonous repetition of the same labor over and over again, with no hope or expectation for an end.” Born in Nepal and trained in mathematics and science in military school, he finds comfort in uniformity and precision. What is a book without words? What is art without meaning? Maharjan believes truth exists in the mundane, in the repurposing of action, in the repetition of nothingness, forever.

Youdhi Maharjan–artist
Henniker, New Hampshire
Website

Top image: Youdhi Maharjan, Buddhas Breath (detail), 2017, collage on book pages, 24 × 21 in. Photo by Youdhi Maharjan

The post Quick Takes: Joy in Repetition appeared first on Take Magazine.

In the thick heat of an afternoon, Suzanne Volmer emerges from her expansive and well loved studio to greet me. As we enter the space, the all-white room unfolds with high ceilings and windows cascading light. Her work floods every corner: wide steel sculptures, paintings, models of outdoor installations, and her vessels—soft bending porcelain structures—all illuminated in afternoon sun.

Like her work, Volmer exudes an infectious intensity as she floats between bodies of various work. It is hard to not be enamored by every item; even small scraps of paper from various project models beam with creativity. In the furthest corner, her vessels sit quietly but demand attention. “These vessels are fired in an electric kiln,” she says. “Most people do not want their work to move once it goes to fire. But I specifically formulate the chemicals in the porcelain strips to shift. I want them to look like they are breathing.” She notes that while porcelain may appear fragile, her vessels also demonstrate immense strength in form and movement.

Clouds, captured full installation view, approximately 16’w X 14’H X 34’D

Volmer is vested in the scientific processes of working with steel and porcelain, manipulating chemical formulations to disrupt the ways in which porcelain and metal fuse and come undone. “What is fascinating to me is that porcelain and steel ignite at the same temperature,” she says. “Porcelain becomes glassy whereas the layers of steel that have been layered together begin to spring apart.” Her pieces, Metal Wedges and Tepees, for instance, are steel sculptures that have been heated to spring apart the layers, exposing charged edges and flakes of metal that she likes to “paint with.” Their texture is reminiscent of charred bark, seemingly fragile and haunted by fire.

Teepees, steel, 6’W X 3’H X 1’D

Volmer leans into the “essential qualities of her materials” and creates based on the movement of a location. Using the natural lines of a hill or the wide support beams of a gallery space, Volmer creates a symbiotic relationship between material and environment, “reusing anything intrinsic to the space.” “I want to create experiential work that does not have a directly obvious narrative,” says Volmer. “It is important for me for my work to exist naturally within a space, but to also command its attention while letting the person viewing it to map their own experiences and feelings.”

Since graduating from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn “too long ago,” she laughs, Volmer has been deeply immersed in the world of fine arts. From teaching at Rhode Island School of Design to being a guest artist at Massachusetts College of Art, she continues to mentor other artists and writes art criticism for various publications. She enjoys collaborative projects as well, including with seemingly non-art related collaborators such as engineers, metal fabricating companies, and various other specialty fields. “I love working with these people within my community who would not otherwise be involved in fine art,” she says. “They get a tremendous charge from being able to put their skills to use on something creative.”

“I like working with porcelain and various metals because the processes are not fragile. They are incredibly labor intensive and forceful and yet the outcome can be very soft,” Volmer says. “As a female artist I have been drawn to this because it commands a type of skill that enables me to be both technical and creative.”

Suzanne Volmer–artist
Lincoln, Rhode Island
Website

Top image Floating World, maquette for large installation, mixed media with porcelain. All images courtesy of Suzanne Volmer

The post Volmer’s Vessels appeared first on Take Magazine.

From Positive Affirmation Underwear and 43 Possible Merkins, to Thighbrows and Domestic Isometric Holds, New Hampshire artist Rachelle Beaudoin uses her body as a feminist landscape for her artwork. As an interdisciplinary media artist, her art vacillates from wearable technology to GIFs and many mediums in between, centralizing her body as a stage to explore feminine stereotypes, pop culture and, often, her obsession with the Kardashians.

Beaudoin weaves humor and an unwavering feminist critique with ease. “I use my own body because it is the most honest way for me to express my ideas and my feelings,” she says. “Using my body is about interacting with time. It is about exploring topics I am sometimes not ready for and breaking down the mold of social expectations to show that my body is still beautiful, even though it may not be exactly what I see in the media.”

In 2014, Beaudoin was a Fulbright artist-in-residence at quartier21 in Vienna, Austria, where she completed a series of body-positive projects including Positive Affirmation Underwear, undergarments with mp3 technology that play back her own recorded self affirmations. “It’s a project that inspires myself and others to see my body how I want it to be seen,” she says.

Beaudoin’s ongoing project, Thigh Brows, is a series of digital videos and gifs of superimposed eyebrows over thighs, often her own and those of women found in fitness magazines. “Do you remember when having a thigh gap was all the rage on Instagram?” she says. “Well, later there was a picture of the Kardashians on a boat. And their thighs are thick and they have big asses. When they were kneeling, there was a crease at the top of their thighs dubbed a “thigh brow” and it became the new ridiculous trend.” Beaudoin’s project uses humor and artistic confessional expression to expose her own body against media stereotypes of expected feminine forms. “Who can even say what a thigh brow is? It is a term that is hilarious and doesn’t make any sense because it is a fabricated body form.”

Beaudoin currently resides in Peterborough, New Hampshire with her forester husband and teaches at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Recent projects have included Pussy Protector, an collaborative project with designer Hanna Broer that was recently shown at the Whitney Houston Biennial in March and the Nasty Women show in Maspeth, New York in January.

Rachelle Beaudoin
Peterborough, New Hampshire
Website

Top image: “Pussy Protector,” altered garment, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The post From Highbrow to Thighbrow appeared first on Take Magazine.

From braiding and rituals to altering memories, Silvi Naçi uses the power of performance to uplift the voices of marginalized communities. Under the nom de plume Silver Projects, Naçi has produced an impressive body of work that includes an artist residency at MASS MoCA (summer 2017) and the founding of STAND UP: Women* You Should Know—an ongoing series of lectures, interviews, and exhibitions focusing on “showing the work of marginalized artists of different class, race, gender identity, religion, cultural ethics, and immigration status”—a 45-woman* group show that premiered at Boston’s Gallery Kayafas in July 2017.

Silvi Naci, Weight of Memory, 2016

Take: What was it like growing up in Albania, and when did you immigrate to the United States?
Silvi Naci: I knew I wanted to be an artist since I was six years old—studying in Fier’s art and music school, [Shkolla] Jakov Xoxa. My cousin, an established painter, taught me how to paint in oils. I continued to study art after moving to the States at the age of 14. Leaving Albania was heartbreaking—but my mother wanted to give my sisters and me the opportunities that Albania couldn’t offer for three ambitious women hungry for education.

T: What have your experiences been as an artist and immigrant living in Boston?
SN: I’ve always had this overwhelming sense of non-belonging to any place, except with my mother. Leaving Albania at such an important age definitely created a slit in my mind. Although I have lived in Boston on and off for 16 years, I have never felt at home. Just this past summer, I returned “home” to Albania after nine long years. I thought maybe I would feel at home there, or at peace. But much has changed, and I have changed. And although I miss even the smallest rock in Albania, I am now an outsider [there] as I am an outsider living in the States.

I often ask other artists if they would be making the same artwork they make in the United States back in the country where they are from, so I started to ask myself the same question. Being born and raised in a country of control, oppression, corruption, and fear, it’s strange to think about ideas like, “You can be whatever you want,” and “Anything is possible.” Lower-middle-class Albanians living in Albania right now do not have that luxury of thought. A lot of my work looks at this disconnect, the contrast, and ideals. I am always trying to build a bridge between these two cultures and traditions.

T: Your work focuses on uplifting marginalized communities such as women, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. Why is this important for you?
SN: I believe that if I ever have any power to be heard, I must bring people with me. There is an African proverb I love: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I can’t imagine anything I would rather do than work with others and create meaningful and impactful work together. My practice is motivated by providing vigorous learning experiences in the arts, and supporting the voices of disenfranchised and ignored cultures. My curatorial work focuses on similar issues that my art addresses: gender, race, social politics, identity, immigration, borders. It is important for me to look at how people are working with these ideas in ways that I have never seen before—not only so I can learn, but to engage with others as well.

Untitled artwork by Silvi Naci

T: How has being an artist engaged your political beliefs in this intensely divided climate?
SN: That can be a whole article in itself! When POTUS won, much like everyone else in our country, I was heartbroken—filled with anxiety and panic. My family and I had already read this book, about Albania—we know how it ends. But [having come] to the States for safety and a better life, we now thought, “Where do we go from here?” The day after the election, I deleted all of my social media accounts besides Instagram, and decided to only focus on art and education. That seemed like the only answer for me to continue living. I just turned back to art and working with people who want to have engaging dialogue instead of turning to hate.

T: Can you describe one of your favorite recent performances?
SN: An ongoing performance that is so dear to me is ONE: pairing myself with someone of another communist culture, past or present, with a similar traumatic history—we braid our hair together into one. Mother Nature intended us to be one people, but as contemporary Western practices promote individuality and uniqueness, we struggle to disconnect and pull apart from each other. Physically and mentally [it’s] a painful act, clear in our expressions. I have a long list of people/countries I want to represent in this work. I think in the end it will be a long video through which the viewer is traveling through the world, one braid at a time.

Silvi Naci
Dorchester, Massachusetts
Website
Instagram

Top image: Still of Naçi from KURV (“whore” in Albanian). Photo courtesy of Silvi Naçi

The post #TakeAction: Curating with a Cause appeared first on Take Magazine.

Softspoken by nature, Chris Plaisted builds sculptures that are anything but quiet. Complex arrangements of steel, copper, wood, and concrete commune together to form sculptures, large and small, that emit a brooding but gentle grace. Originally from New Hampshire, Plaisted graduated from Parson’s New School for Design in New York City, and has maintained a longstanding career as a graphic design artist. However, six years ago he reignited a childhood love for woodwork and metalsmithing that now drives his creative practice.

“My work tends to focus on forms of conflict,” he says. “It may be in the concept—man vs. nature, social vs. emotion—or it may be the tension created by the use of contrasting materials.” Focusing primarily on what he sees as “permanent materials” such as wood, steel, copper, concrete, and other precious metals, Plaisted intensifies his materials by placing them in opposition, highlighting their strengths and vulnerabilities.

With an air of mystery, Plaisted’s sculptures look like stories waiting to unfold. His sculpture Harbinger, impressive in both size and skill, is inspired by religious artifacts at The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of European medieval art and architecture. “As you walk around it, you will see a cross, a 4 for the [four] horseman of the apocalypse and a 7 for the seven plagues,” he says. Smaller sculptures, such as Rapture, display a secret intimate story between the materials of steel, copper, and wood coming together in an delicate and enduring embrace.

Anabassis, height: 15ft. On display at the Sculpture Now, an exhibition of large outdoor sculpture at The Mount, Lenox, MA., image courtesy of Catherine Plaisted

Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood between Candlewood Lake and the Housatonic River in Connecticut, Plaisted draws inspiration from the nature around him, staying busy across many creative forms that include sculpture, graphic design, and painting. Plaisted hails from a creative family; his father is an acclaimed pastiche artist and his grandmother is an award-winning tinsel folk artist, and both laid the groundwork for his creative childhood. At an early age, he was introduced to metal and woodwork by a neighbor who was a welder.

Scrolls, steel, image courtesy of Chris Plaisted

Plaisted’s work currently resides at The Mount, the Berkshire historic estate of famed novelist Edith Wharton, as well as the Pierce Ball Gallery in Stamford, Connecticut. “As I continue to hopefully create visually appealing art, I don’t want to be constrained by style or medium,” Plaisted says. “Quite the opposite; they should flow to the next piece no matter the form or expression.”

Chris Plaisted–sculptor
New Milford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook

Top image, Harbinger, steel, width: 10’, height: 12’, depth: 10’. Image courtesy of Catherine Plaisted.

The post Forms in Conflict appeared first on Take Magazine.

Contemporary artist and abstract projectionist painter are not often terms one associates with a 14- year-old, but prodigy artist Qua is painting against the grain. Beginning in June 2017, Qua began a 17-evening live painting performance in New Haven, Connecticut, that began during the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and stretches into September. Qua has been inhabiting a 500-square-foot storefront of a downtown commercial space and filling the walls with a single abstract expressionist composition.

His performance, like his name, is unique: it includes collaborations with local artists and live music, and is centered around his high speed painting style fused with “local narratives and surreal imagery.” “I am a self-taught painter,” Qua writes via email. His name, while originally an accidental misspelling of the word “prequel,” now seems more prescient, he says, referencing the use of the word in the Latin phrase art qua art, or that art can be judged by aesthetics only.

Originally drawn to realism, Qua began experimenting with large abstraction when he began working in an artist studio by the Mill River almost two years ago. The large walls of the studio entranced Qua as he was able to paint compositions that “dwarfed me in size” and required more physical exertion. “Painting on a large scale requires the use of my full body, a more physical process including intensive arm movements and the use of my body as medium to house paint supplies and tools.”

Canvas 14, 4 1/2′ x 5′ mixed oil and acrylic, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist.

While Qua does not consider himself a “professional artist”—yet—the breadth and intensity of his work demonstrates raw skill. Moving between sharp details and abstract movement of color and cascading images, Qua’s work is dreamlike and poignant, capturing the emotion of his paintings as well as the viewer. He also brings a unique force of performance to his painting process.

Canvas 3, 4 1/2′ x 5′ mixed oil and acrylic, 2015. Image courtesy of Qua.

Originally a “private performance,” Qua began to invite viewers into the grandiose exercise of his painting technique. Adorned in costume and immersed in choreography, Qua paints to music, and uses light and video projection—and sometimes darkness—to “create a private space for me to be with my shadow self.”

Due to the generous sponsorship of a commercial realtor in downtown New Haven, Qua has been making live performance paintings at 817 Chapel Street since early June. He performs there at sundown 4-5 nights a week on the second floor and then displays his work during the day. The show is scheduled to end September 15th.

Qua
Deep River, Connecticut
Website

All images courtesy of Qua

The post All Eyes on Qua appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you can imagine a world that manages to creep you out while being simultaneously outrageously adorable, then you’ve landed smack in the middle of Mimi Chrzanowski’s brain—a mythical land of cleaner-shrimp dentists, post-death anxiety, and Mother’s Day in hell. Like her work, she possesses an air of absolute magic and a dark force of weird. “Mimi is a national treasure,” says artist and friend J.R. Uretsky. “Her work is fresh and unassuming. A mixture of joy and play with a touch of queer rage. Mimi’s gifs and comics make me want to keep making art in the wake of an uninspired political landscape. She’s a real gift.”

Born in Chicago, but raised in the small town of Tomah, Wisconsin, Chrzanowski made her way to Providence, Rhode Island on a whim after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where she studied illustration. In Providence, Chrzanowski has been a part of the Dirt Palace and AS220, both artist-run collectives committed to the unabashed and uncensored production of art across all mediums. “I have been incredibly lucky to be in a city where there are so many beautiful weirdos doing incredible work,” she says. “I have a crush on everything everyone is doing, and I feel super inspired all of the time.”

Mimi Chrzanowski, Shrimp Cleaners, pen and marker, from The Providence Sunday Wipeout #3

Chrzanowski’s first love has always been illustration. Inspired early by anime such as Pokémon and Sailor Moon, she finds drawing a natural extension of her brain. “Drawing feels so pure; it is just pen or pencil and a piece of paper,” she says. “I love watching what other people can create out of such a simple medium, building these entire weird worlds that just feel like a pure form of expression, a place where people can get out whatever they want to say.” She also engages with other mediums such as screen printing, video, and animation, but feels most at home with the flexibility of just a pen and paper.

In 2016, Chrzanowski was invited to create her own LeyLines comic, a quarterly publication co-published by Grindstone Comics and Czap Books. Made with Love in Hell is a Heironymus Bosch-inspired extravaganza set on Mother’s Day in Hell. Clad in a single burnt orange tone, the comic unleashes a cast of iconic hell imagery with a sadistic and adorable undertone featuring familiar characters from her previous comics. Writer John Seven described this work as filled with “…oogly, creepy monsters in lots of gruesome crowd scenes in which atrocities, or at least ugliness, are smashed together like sardines, only this is all cute instead of horribly nightmarish.”

Mimi Chrzanowski, LeyLines Interior

Fresh from the QTZ Zine Fest at AS220, she is currently working on a children’s illustration for Cicada Magazine, a small batch publishing company that focuses on illustrated books for adults and children. In the fall she will showing work in an exhibition at Hoof Print in Chicago. “I have been lucky enough that I can make art for a living,” she says. “I just want to live a life where I can be in nature, be at home, be at the beach, and continue to be inspired and make things that make other people happy as well.”

Mimi Chrzanowski–illustrator
Providence, Rhode Island
Website
Instagram

Top image, two of Mimi’s Shellies, illustration courtesy of Mimi Chrzanowski

The post Made with Love in Hell appeared first on Take Magazine.

At four years old, Judith Thorpe proclaimed to her parents that she wanted to be a photographer, having little idea what that word actually meant. Her mother and father, who she lovingly describes as “professional amateur photographers,” never had any formal training besides a decent camera and a keen eye for the world around them.

Thorpe was raised by a deeply Catholic mother, and attended a parochial grade school and later a private girls’ Catholic high school. Her current work, The Passions, reflects a lifetime of skilled intimacy behind a camera, evoking complex religious iconography, with her body as the subject; it’s an accurate reflection of her upbringing.

Adoration by Judith Thorpe

“The female icons that I became familiar with [are] perplexing and conflicting,” she says about The Passions, her ongoing project that can be seen in part on exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum. “The symbols of Aphrodite, Venus, and the Virgin Mary [are] complex and contradictory. The woman [is] virginal but coy, maternal but sexual, chaste but pregnant.” The stories of women’s bodies portrayed through religious storytelling and reimagined through mainstream media shape the way that women relate to their bodies, she says.

The Passions, “Ecstasy,” by Judith Thorpe

“I am interested in these stories because they are so often told through male interpretation, as if Mary is so pleased to be the vessel for carrying Jesus. And I am thinking to myself, ‘Is she experiencing fear?’” says Thorpe. “I ask these uncomfortable questions as I am looking at art about the Annunciation. Is she experiencing pain? Is she sexually excited by this? And I see that Mary has her arms behind her. Is this rape? And no one wants to ask these uncomfortable questions. It freaks them out because it is taboo.”

The Passions exudes an undeniable air of eroticism and iconographic familiarity. Thorpe’s body, cloaked in a white sheet and displayed in a manifest of shadows and folds, highlights certain erotic details while obscuring others. Her imagery from afar looks like a marble statue akin to Greek and Roman statues.

The Passions, “Lamentation,” by Judith Thorpe

The Passions has many chapters through which we observe Thorpe’s self. In “Transcendent,” her body is beautifully exposed while “Consecration” shows her in fraught constriction with the white sheet. “This work is a process of reflection,” she says. “As the female body ages, it is much harder to align ourselves with the standards of the male gaze. This work is both a reflection and for me, a place to move forward from that.”

Judith Thorpe–photographer
Connecticut
Website

Top image: Ecstasy, cropped, by Judith Thorpe

The post The Passions of Judith Thorpe appeared first on Take Magazine.