Blog Prompts 01

Explain how nostalgia (as discussed/defined in the reading) is apparent or identifiable in a. your actual work or b. your studio practice/research/methodology. or c. both.

In my own personal work, nostalgia is defined through conversations of vulnerability. While I am photographing 50 LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming humans for the grant I am working on, I ask them to bring a prop that represents them. Almost always the object they bring has a nostalgic resemblance or collection value. For example, in the image I took (above) the person depicted is carving an apple. The apple signifies nostalgia because for the person it reminds him of his traumatic childhood. He grew up close to farms with an extremely religious family, who sent him to conversion therapy for being homosexual. "A nostalgiac mourning" (p33) as Susan Stewart said; some slight elements do coincide. 

Refer to the text and poetically describe the essential/intrinsic qualities of an everyday type of space that fascinates you and in some way or another is a type of site that is an important part of your work. Deconstruct it, describe it as a social construct, how it is shaped by language, signs, cultural understandings, history, or any other creative insights you can think of. 

"The profundity of illusion in order to accomplish his impossible task of accounting for the planet" pg 

52 On Longing by Susan Stwert 

A space that starts off everyday with the first immediate task of my day,

A space that involves spending time trying to wake up after probably another sleepless night. 

A space that I can be happily naked in for a relatively short period of time. 

A space that I often take advantage of without even noticing how many times I use it.

A space that is publicly a social construct, and in private a way to escape them.

A space that has historically promoted indifference in race, gender, and class.

A space that culturally has different customary features across the World. 

A space that has more nicknames than people, but is what I refer to as the bathroom.

I have started to deconstruct gender and sexuality roles in my art work, and how social spaces negate to be more inclusive, or in opposition make people uncomfortable to the fact that it does not always exist in a heteronormative finite. This exploration is inspiring me to push these boundaries, and I am really interested in exploiting to further expand conversations revolving these factors.