Art of the Month: E.V.Day

[unityofeffect]

I've decided to go with a more modern artwork for this second blog. I love going to galleries and museums, but sadly I don't get the chance to much lately. That's why it was so cool to discover this artist and her work in an article in the Oct./Nov.'07 issue of Bust magazine.

Her work embraces and is inspired by humor, femininity, science, and aeronautics. Many of her other pieces capture motion, a transformation of explosion. They include Bride Fight, in which "two exploding wedding dresses appear suspended in a Matrix-style standoff," and G-Force, an exhibit of flying thongs. She's also had a series of exploding couture and dissected wetsuits and was even commissioned by NASA to create a sculpture using a Mars rover tire.

I've selected the Mummified Barbies series because I had one of the strongest reactions to them when I first saw the picture. They were disturbing but there was also a sense of humor there. E.V. Day says about them: " One of the main reasons for working with Barbie is about referencing popular culture. Using such an icon can be very cliche and campy. A one-liner. That's why I didn't think that the piece would ever go very far. However, as simplistic as this image might seem, I think it's also very complex, in that it's so telling about our culture. We've always represented ourselves in these exaggerated forms, like the Venus of Willendorf. Our development as a species is at a stage where we can endlessly alter our bodies. A hundred years ago the idea of the cyborg would have been unthinkable. Barbie is also very complex because she functions as a mirror that can be debilitating to women."

Seeing these images made me think of repression and freedom, both societal and personal. It reminds me of Egyptian mummies, Chinese footbinding, Islamic burqa's, American plastic surgeries, as well as the ideas we develop ourselves, as we are growing up, about how we should look and feel about our bodies.

How did you respond? Do they make you uncomfortable or just seem silly?

[unityofeffect]

Mummified Barbies, 1991-2004 E.V. Day Barbies and Mixed Media

[unityofeffect]

Finishing your first script sounds pretty amazing. I'm looking forward to the pictures.

I agree that her look is a bit over-the-top but they don't have many music videos and I loved the scenery and of course the music.

[Morgan le Fay]

Don't worry, I already finished my heaviest assignment (end of studies project, I finally finished my first script woohoo!), so I have some time these days. I just started the search for the catalogue and was successful, so in the next few days I'll post the pictures on your comment wall, ok?

And thank you ever so much for the video! Azam Ali is a tad too diva-ish in her looks for my taste, but she sure knows how to wriggle her arms, and that video is very, very beautiful.

[unityofeffect]

Oh you're so right about the Egyptians. That makes more sense. Very cool. Too bad Barbie has no brains to take out. XD

I'd love to see the pictures but only if it's no bother. I know you are a busy gal.

[Morgan le Fay]

Well, the egyptians also cut the bodies hair off, and whipped out their brains through the nostrils, and replaced their insides with stuffing... perhaps E.V. Day was taking the mummyfying thing very literally...

OMG the Candy thing is SO beautiful!

I'm not sure I know of a link to the photos of "One way only". However, I think I have the catalogue lying around somewhere. If you like, I can scan de pictures and post them in your message wall, how about that?

[unityofeffect]

I may have found a page with some of photos by Charis Mundy you were talking about. I couldn't see any close-up but they did look intriguing. If you find a link that shows his work more clearly/largely let me know.

One of the things I like so much about E.V. Day is that a lot of her work is very playful and humorous. I love pieces that make you laugh and question at the same time. I saw this one display at the Art Institute that blew me away. Sadly I don't remember the artist's name off the top of my head but basically it was a large pile of candy in the corner of a gallery. The candy represented the weight of the artist's lover who had died of AIDS. A placard next to it explained the piece and encouraged everyone to take a piece of candy. It was a bizarre, morbid, yet funny way of addressing death, the AIDS crisis, and humanity. The artist was celebrating his loved one's life by wanting everyone to enjoy something sweet while still making you think about the loss. I may even still have the candy wrapper from my piece of candy.

The interpretation you brought to the Mummified Barbies is interesting and adds another level to it that is fun to think about. However, since she did things to the Barbies (like cutting their hair, straightening their knees, binding their feet) before encasing them I'm not sure how much of their artificial beauty is technically preserved. Course that doesn't change the way they look once they're encased so it could still apply. It's an interesting idea. I think art really works when it provokes multiple thoughts and feelings.

[Morgan le Fay]

I wasn't familiar whith E. V. Day's work, but google told me what I needed to know, and I like her very very much!

The Mummified Barbies seem to me like a humoristic turn on works like Charis Mundy's collection of photograph's "One way only". I think they're a bit hard to find on the internet, but the basic idea is the same: a twist on the paradigms of feminity and the feminine form.

There's, I think, another way to see the Mummified Barbies. If we take the idea literally, couldn't it be understood as an attempt to artificially preserve the (already) artificial beauty of the dolls?

[unityofeffect]

Do you mean destroy them as in take them apart for us to see? Or just get rid of them? If she'd just destroyed/gotten rid of them how would we know how she felt about them? We would have nothing to see.

I think it's wonderfully exciting to take such a familiar American image of supposed cheerfulness and happiness and put it in a restrained and foreign context. From what I understood in the article I read she did other things to the barbies before she mummified them, like cutting their hair, straightening their knees, and binding their feet.

It also reminds me of the idea of trying to contain women. Taking such a sexualized ideal (Barbie was based on a German doll originally marketed to adults) and covering it up in a smothering, coffin-like case says a lot. I like that you can look at it from different angles. The cultural and historical repression of women, the sexualization of children, the fear of female sexuality, so many things to think about.

You should check out her other pieces, I think you'd like them. Her website is linked through her name under the Mummified Barbies picture.