“All acts are political and whether one is conscious or not, the presentation of one’s work/production does not escape this rule” Daniel Buren (Terranova, Performing the Frame, p1)
My practice is an investigation of the political and cultural layers of our personal lives.
I have been investigating ways to express the concept that as we grow up and become socialized we are acquiring layers. Layers of behaviour, styles of speech, our ‘place’ in life, ways of coping and fitting in that are not ‘us’ that we adopt to make us seem ‘normal’. These are the layers we assimilate through socialisation, trauma, illness or any or the diverse experiences defining and forming us within our lives and cultures.
I am responding to a world where freedom is a word rather than a reality. To a reality where our environment, behaviour, thoughts, desires even our style are profoundly controlled. The layers or stratum we acquire that are a part of the political and cultural conditioning that permeate every area of life from the environment through to the social and personal.
We experience this first hand waking up next to someone we care about. There is the sense of raw humanity, exposed briefly to us, before the psychological armour of the day changes them. I am trying to make physical the non-physical.
Email: joannastanford@hotmail.co.uk