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Monday, January 25, 2016

Post, the twelfth -- a visible past, a continuation of unmasked realness

photo 2 of 12 of a visible past

this series of photos is a continuation of unmasked realness and to be honest, for a while that's absolutely all they were.

people suggested to keep going with the lip thing, so i moved up my face, tried to do the whole eye makeup thing, and took photos of it.

i think some of the images are kind of beautiful, but i'm not entirely sure what they mean, but i'm not entirely sure what this book is talking about half the time either.

they say that our eyes are the interpreters of our souls, but what if they're tongue tied and they say that our eyes are the windows to our souls, but what if they're foggy?

what do made-up eyes tell us that naked ones can't?

photo 10 of 12 of a visible past

maybe all of the glitter, black smudges and mascara are just a distraction, a way of keeping what our souls are a secret; if people just look at your eyes and not past them, you're safe, right?

but, again, i think of why and what we want to hide or why we want to change how we look.

maybe you have some deep, dark secret, or maybe you just want another form of creative expression.

maybe you're trying to impress someone, or maybe you're trying to impress yourself.

Jean Baudrillard said "it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality, but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real" (pg 25).

when someone puts makeup on, they are still themselves, maybe they become more self assured, but that doesn't mean that the tube of Too Faced mascara they bought at Sephora is magic.

it means that they had it in them all along; they just needed a little help; and maybe they're more confident now, but maybe their eyes are streaky and their mascara is flaky and maybe if you saw that, you'd know that they weren't having a great day.

photo 9 of 12 of a visible past

maybe you'd know more if you really looked at what's going on instead of just seeing that someone took the time to touch their face up that morning and making an assumption about them.

i think this goes for a lot of things in life.

we have reasons for what we do, conscious or not, we have reasons and again, i think those reasons are so important.

i think that people are inherently beautiful and i wish that everyone could see what i see when i look at people and i really wish they could see it when they look at themselves.

i guess what i'm trying to say (maybe?) is don't judge; look and don't judge, but think are care and love.

wonder about the people around you and their reasons for what they do, like, wear, read, draw.

i know i just took some pictures of my eyes so this might seem like a stretch, but this is what i got from it, so this is what i can give you.

you can see the rest of the (unedited) photos from a visible past here.




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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Post, the eleventh -- "an unnamed need"

right now, the Wriston Gallery features an exhibit with work by Anila Quayyum Agha, Jennifer Angus, Michelle Grabner, Heather McGill and Tony Orrico.

although i couldn't make it to the opening, i just checked it out and it was pretty cool.

the description inside the gallery reads:

"We desire beautiful things, and yet we discount them.  
Beauty has been so exploited as a means of manipulation 
in contemporary society that we have learned to mistrust it.  
Consequently, we denigrate qualities that create the experience of beauty: 
pattern and ornament are scoffed at as mindless; carefully crafted 
objects are dismissed as elitist; lush and pristine surfaces are considered superficial.  
We have allowed the abuse of beauty to blind us to its richness of meaning.

The works assembled here bring that richness back before our eyes, 
and compel us to contemplate all that beauty can encompass: the fluid 
boundaries among natural and artificial; eye, mind, and body; 
self and other; form and nothingness."

the first room of the exhibit was a series of beautiful patterns on the walls but, unfortunately, i couldn't really look at them because they were made of giant bugs so it was pretty much my worst nightmare; Miriam Beerman was a walk in the park compared to this.

the room that i really enjoyed was the third and final room with Tony Orrico's work that i'm really disappointed i didn't get to see in action.

images of work by Tony Orrico in the Wriston Gallery

his work is extremely active but at the same time looks totally controlled because of the repetition.  

in a way i think that his work really relates, in a very literal way, to the idea of production in Simulations.

i wonder, though, how Tony's intentional production of one (master) piece at a time relates to Baudrillard's idea that "what society seeks through production, and overproduction, is the restoration of the real which escapes it." (pg 44)

are Orrico's works anything less than real if they can never truly be duplicated, not in the same way with the same people feeling and thinking the same things.

maybe Tony Orrico's works are some of the only real works i or we have ever seen.



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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Post, the tenth -- unmasked realness

new year, new, crazy book to draw inspiration from.

our first project of the term is inspired by some of the first pages of the book, "Simulations" by Jean Baudrillard.

we're supposed to talk about realness and being unmasked and representation and what it all means.

i don't know what it means.

any of it.

i think this book might be easier to read in french.

anyway, i started thinking about makeup.

i started thinking about all the work we go through to put makeup on and then to make it look perfect when in reality, at least for me, there's usually lipstick all over my teeth and face by the time i'm ready to walk out the door.

photo 11 of 12 from unmasked realness

then, i started thinking about why we even wear makeup; what we get out of changing our physical appearances and i thought that maybe our made-up selves are more real than the natural, naked-faced selves we wake up with.

maybe how i want to look to other people, or even to myself, can explain to you more about the real me and maybe the things i try to hide are actually more revealing than the things themselves because maybe if you saw my lipstick stained face, cracked lips and unbleached teeth, you'd wonder what other parts of me are rushed, broken or dirty.

as Baudrillard says "to dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has" (pg 5).

photo 8 of 12 from unmasked realness

maybe when i wear a headband, it's not only to get my flyaways under control, but it's also because i've seen every episode of Gossip Girl ever and Blair always wears a headband and she's a powerful, respected woman and imitating her makes me feel good about myself.

who knows, maybe i just like red lipstick and maybe that's because i think that Marilyn Monroe is iconic and beautiful or maybe it's because i think it looks polished and put together and maybe i think these things without ever having consciously thought them and it has nothing to do with my cracked lips at all.

there's a reason for the choices we make, whether its biking or driving to work, buying skinny jeans or bellbottoms, reading Stephen King or Jane Austen, and those reasons are the things that show the real us even if we're using these things to draw attention away from something we see as unfavorable.

why we see them as unfavorable is more telling and revealing than the things themselves.

you can see the other 10 (unedited) photos from unmasked realness by clicking here.



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