#BUT it is bizarre - this universal womanhood narrative. i think exploring one's own femininity is extremely interesting. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bmpmp3 · 8 months ago

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ive been having a lot of fun incorporating embroidery onto paper drawings in school recently (inspired by a printmaking teacher i had once who sometimes stitched her prints, it looked really cool!) but one thing that has kind of been bugging me is how my instructors have been talking about the gendered aspect of it. i know using any form of textile practice in contemporary art is gonna get some kind of thoughts about the historical concept of "women's work" and i dont mind that thats chill thats like normal. its not what, i, the artist, is focusing on personally, but death of the author and all that, as an interpretation its an interesting thing to think about and equally as valid as my intention. also a good topic for essays and such

BUT today my instructor tried to convince me that i can embroider directly on printer paper instead of the thicker papers ive been using and i was like ABSOLUTELY NOT maybe YOU can but I have BIG CLUMSY SWEATY HOT MITTEN HANDS and i Destroy printer paper by looking at it funny. the second a photocopy reaches my skin its already wrinkled. gloves dont help my sweat is too powerful. im CLAMMY leave me ALONE hfkjrwefhjegrfe

and there is an unconcious bias ive been noticing of a lot of very progressively minded artists assuming that i can do this shit delicately. listen. embroidery can be a very delicate and masterful skill that people hone over decades. but not everyone who does it is that skilled master. some of us just like to clumsily sew string through stuff so they can feel the texture. and some of us are really sweaty.

#actually the way my class and department faculty in general talk about gender and feminism in art is a little offputting in general recently #the focus on softness and delicateness and stereotypical markers of femininity is chill thats like an interesting thing to think about #lots of things to explore and critique and then embrace as not innate 'womanly' things but as like. human. as women are human #that type of thing. but theres been a lot of simultaneous emphasis among my peers of like this universal womanhood?#woman as the archetype. and woman as something wholly different from anything else. and the universal 'sisterhood'#i dunno im like fat mixed race kinda gnc and more visibly disabled than i think i am so i was like #never gonna be fully brought into that supposed 'universal sisterhood' anyway #and whether i personally think of myself as a woman or not in general is nobodys business least of all my own #BUT it is bizarre - this universal womanhood narrative. i think exploring one's own femininity is extremely interesting.#is it soft? is it hard? something else? all kinds of ways to think about it #i think the pitfall im falling in with my peers is the habit of assuming you need to make art as a universal message: theres no such thing #any 'universal message' you make will always exclude people you dont mean to exclude #if you depict your universal womanhood as young and soft and skinny and feminine and nuturing - then i might wonder #about the women who are outside of that. what about that fat masc 60 year old woman who cant nuture for shit #(gets so hard i get naseous. i think i hauve covid) i dunno its on my mind a lot #maybe thats just the way things go even in art spaces that are trying to be progressive? always a type of woman who is in vogue #a type of woman who is considered the default? and whoevers outside of that is left out of the conversation entirely #(<- bmpmp3 discovering the basics of misogyny live in the tags of this tumblr post LOL but yknow what i mean)

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