Dear all:
The organization that I’m working with is having an exhibition of self-portrait by two women artists. In relation to our discussion of the “image of the self” the past few weeks, it may interest you.
http://www.momentaart.org/momenta-art-to-selves-joy-episalla-and-susan-silas.html
Honestly, I have a troubling feeling about these works. Susan Silas is interesting especially in relation to her past projects. (http://www.susansilas.com/portfolio/helmbrechts-walk.html) If retrospective experience of Lacanian mirror stage in adulthood has something to do with Nazism, how can we make sense of a woman (probably Jewish) making a self-portrait in this manner? What is she seeing in the image of the self in a white space? Is it coherence of ego, or void of the self? Does this psychological inclination have something to do with a particular “class”?
Joy Episalla uses her lost hair as prosthesis in memory of her deceased friends from AIDS. What psychic economy established here?
I’ll be at the gallery during gallery hours, Thursday – Monday, 12-6pm. Come and chat with me if you have a chance.
