Department of Visual Arts

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https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/647

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Browsing Department of Visual Arts by Subject "Abjection in art"

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    After birth : abjection and maternal subjectivity in Svea Josephy's "Confinement"
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-12) Steyn, Christine; Van Robbroeck, Lize; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis I investigate the radical reframing of maternal representation in the photographic series by Cape Town-based artist Svea Josephy (b. 1969), entitled Confinement 2005-ongoing. Using Julia Kristeva’s theorisation of the maternal body’s relation to abjection, as well as its imperative to the remodelling of the relationship between the corporeal and the cultural, I explore how Josephy’s images explicitly engage with the Kristevan abject in order to disrupt cultural inscriptions of maternity and ‘motherhood’. I contend that Confinement situates Josephy’s experience of ‘becoming-mother’ against the dominant discourses of maternity and birth, and thereby uses the maternal subject as a means to interrogate broader issues of gender and identity.
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    Surfacing fat : adiposity as adornment
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-12) Darries, Mouroodah Sulayman; Veldsman, Nanette; Van Robbroeck, Lize; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis provides a critical discussion of, and motivation for, my jewellery practice, in which fat from the human body is transformed into adornment. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of ‘abjection’, this research scrutinises the grotesque status of body substances in the modern media, with the intention of changing viewer reactions to these substances from repulsion to aesthetic enjoyment. I consider the influence of popular culture, where idealised bodies are promoted as ‘better’ than non-normative body types, and then consider how (or whether) the abject remainders of the ‘ideal body’ can successfully be refigured as adornment. In order to situate my practical Masters work in the wider field of contemporary avant-garde jewellery practice, I study the work of select jewellers, who also refer to, or use, body substances in critical ways in their work. Through this, I hope to scrutinise both normative notions of the body and of jewellery as adornment.