Vulnerability and Shame

January 3rd, 2017
 
I feel like I just got out of prison.  Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which a captive identifies with their captor.  In which they develop a kinship for the person who has held them in captivity.  I was held captive by myself.  So, am I closer to myself? I can say wholeheartedly that my sense of self is changed.  Today, is January 3rd, 2017 and it is the first day in which I have worn something other than my jumpsuit.  I made a contract with myself and the world through social media that I would wear the same uniform for an entire year, every day, without washing it.  On January 1st, I couldn’t take it off and decided that I wouldn’t until February for my MA Thesis show.  On January 2nd, 2017 I stayed in my pajamas all day.  Today, I needed to get dressed and at 1pm, I realized that I could not wear the uniform any longer.  I couldn’t bear the thought of stepping into it for another day.  I achieved my goal, endured my contract.  My suit set me apart isolating me but also made me completely visible.  I was marking this sense of isolation and visually marking my separation from the world as a result of the trauma in my life.   Today, I can see the relationship between my paintings and my durational performance more clearly and honestly than I have been able to see while amidst it.  Artist Working was living art, a transformation to seeing my life as a process oriented durational performance. Life as a continual persistent process of self-discovery and becoming. Making myself vulnerable for the time and visible.  Brene Brown says that "courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen".  She also says that "owning our own story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it".  I wanted to be seen publicly and to ultimately see myself.  Visibility, and vulnerability were primary interests-and now that I am out of the suit, I realize that my next project is uncovering shame.  Exploring the connection my art, life, relationships, and role as a mother is shaped, and manipulated by the shame I carry.  The suit was work.  The project was research and art, not knowing where I was going to end up, still not knowing where I will end up.  John Dewey, in his essay The Act of Expression in the book Art as Experience stated, “The act of expression that constitutes a work of art is a construction of time, not an instantaneous emission.  And this statement signifies a great deal more than that it takes time for the painter to transfer his imaginative conception to canvas and for the sculptor to complete his chipping of marble.  It means that the expression of the self in and through a medium, constituting the work of art, is itself a prolonged interaction of something issuing from the self with objective conditions, a process in which both of them acquire a form and order they did not at first possess.” (Dewey, 1934)  
 

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