Kathy Kelley :: Project Ideation :: Stumbling into my own amalgamated engendered identity

My project this semester is composed of residual traces of the past couple of months as I have continued head-on run into my own amalgamated resolving feminine identity. I am in the process of codifying it more textually for this class but the current traces are located http://kathykelley.us/tag/art-5364/

This semester http:

(1) I finished the realization of a series of installation artworks hinging on domesticity and femininity via an exhibition at LHUCA.

i dissolve these fabricated seatings 2015.

archiving the distentions of memory

[not to scale].  2015

in the space of absence. 2008-2015

[and my mental title:

my meat locker of 9' desiccated but sumptuous va-jjs]

(2) Presented my in process findings of engendered differences in the practice of language by female visual artists as compared to the general public and male artists. Though I have put this together for verbal presentation, I have yet to flesh it out as a formal paper. Perhaps what I should focus on for this class.

(3) Built the website http://onesownfemininity.com and initiated the call for literary works for an interdisciplinary project that was a reaction to a late call last spring for grant funding under the title of Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. And so I move along in this independent project which will be exhibited in April 2016.  

ABBREVIATED PROJECT DESCRIPTION The interdisciplinary grant title, Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, called to mind the fact (or at least based on my unlimbered capacity and imaginings) that a female can only see herself, her physical sexual specificity, with some form of reflecting device. Gender understandings seem to be culturally constitutive and core to our identities, more so than we would like to believe possible. This performative reading project collaboratively explores the female’s first encounter with her own femininity. It is our intent to work fluidly between physical space (visual art/installation), textual/literary space (flash creative nonfiction/confessional poetry), and liminal space (theatrical direction, contemplative somatic movement, aural exploration/interpretation) and body.  http://onesownfemininity.com 

 (4) And though for another class yet spurred on by my independent research and our course readings, I am experimenting with looking for parallels in engendered textual and spoken language practices as they compare to artistic visual vocabularies. And to make this a manageable exercise, ha, I have chosen Agnes Martin, who both wrote and painted and claimed "I am not a woman," to look for performative traces of femininity in her paintings as compared to her male counterparts.