Spectra on the edge of embodiment : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
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Date
2017
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Massey University
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Abstract
This creative-practice research references a body undergoing transformation in the
search of the essence of self based on perceptions of a skin rendered permeable by
years of my own emersion in eastern esoteric practices.
In this exegesis, I allude to a transformative process that shifted my art practice from
figurative clay sculpture and painting to the projection of digital light forms. The
projections belie an interface of the flesh body encased in the skin and everything else
that is considered as ‘outside’. At this interface is an ontological model of self that has a
subjective malleability, one that blends with the external world of visible objects and
invisible forces, felt but not seen. Composed of photographs of surfaces I have
encountered, the projections transcend the world of material edges and boundaries into
a borderspace where the “active power of things” alluded to by political and ecological
theorist, Jane Bennett in her work Vibrant Matter holds sway (Bennett, 2010).
The phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty’s notions of the borderless self centred in his
description of “flesh ontology” offers a framework within which I engage an audience in
propagating their connections to personal corporality and surrounding spaces (Merleau-
Ponty, 2004). This artwork makes visible how the world touches us and we touch the world,
igniting the haptic experience of perceiving life as one single continuous existential
experience.
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Keywords
Isla Griffin-Wilson, Skin in art, Human figure in art, Research Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Aesthetic subjects::Art