Approaching with Tenderness and Love
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Verktext:
When I was around 20 years old, I thought for a while that I was transgender. I wasn't comfortable in my body and the lumps on the front of my chest felt disconnected to me. Being a woman meant being trapped in a place I didn't want to be. I changed my sex on facebook to see it how it felt and tried out new names for myself in my mind.
I don't remember how the change came, it might have been sudden or it might have come sneaking up on me, but I realised it was all wrong. It wasn't that I wanted to change the body I was in. I had confused internalised misogyny with trans-masculinity. I realised that the feeling of discomfort when trying to live up to being a woman is something that is shared by most women. With these new insights, an opportunity arouse: to redefine what womanhood means for me. What I want to fill it with. To start being human rather than female. Still, I've carried with me a fascination with the feminine. It's like a white deer escaping through the rim of the forest at twilight ... I keep watching for it, keep chasing it. I want to indulge in it, but even when I do, its full being and meaning eludes me.
Right now, I am looking for it in the form of a vintage dress; a frilled vintage negligee in bright pink nylon. I am closing in on this garment, looking at it from different angles, and reproducing what I see. I repeat images in layers of possible truths of what it means to be a woman and what womanhood demands of us seeking it. I work in transparent fabrics and in mixed fibre textile, where I can treat the different types of textile fibres separately – creating layers in layers.
The repetition in itself forms gaps and ruptures between realities, as I am making my images of the image of the woman. I know that there isn't one truth, but many. I will keep circling the feminine until I get close enough to access some of its secrets.
By approaching it with tenderness and love ~
Verktext:
When I was around 20 years old, I thought for a while that I was transgender. I wasn't comfortable in my body and the lumps on the front of my chest felt disconnected to me. Being a woman meant being trapped in a place I didn't want to be. I changed my sex on facebook to see it how it felt and tried out new names for myself in my mind.
I don't remember how the change came, it might have been sudden or it might have come sneaking up on me, but I realised it was all wrong. It wasn't that I wanted to change the body I was in. I had confused internalised misogyny with trans-masculinity. I realised that the feeling of discomfort when trying to live up to being a woman is something that is shared by most women. With these new insights, an opportunity arouse: to redefine what womanhood means for me. What I want to fill it with. To start being human rather than female. Still, I've carried with me a fascination with the feminine. It's like a white deer escaping through the rim of the forest at twilight ... I keep watching for it, keep chasing it. I want to indulge in it, but even when I do, its full being and meaning eludes me.
Right now, I am looking for it in the form of a vintage dress; a frilled vintage negligee in bright pink nylon. I am closing in on this garment, looking at it from different angles, and reproducing what I see. I repeat images in layers of possible truths of what it means to be a woman and what womanhood demands of us seeking it. I work in transparent fabrics and in mixed fibre textile, where I can treat the different types of textile fibres separately – creating layers in layers.
The repetition in itself forms gaps and ruptures between realities, as I am making my images of the image of the woman. I know that there isn't one truth, but many. I will keep circling the feminine until I get close enough to access some of its secrets.
By approaching it with tenderness and love ~
