I’ve just devoured Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman. Not only did I relish the opportunity to read something about feminism – but I also felt so ready to start reading again, on social questions, with purpose.
I have always read, and I love thinking critically but I have become lazy in the last few years reading short articles and bits and pieces online. In order for me to develop some of my ideas as I enter my MA in September I need to start to grow in my thinking again. And I can’t wait. It feels a little bit like shaking off the dust and finding a shiny part of my brain has been hidden. I hadn’t realised I felt like this, but I did know that I wanted to start exploring more in Art, asking more questions.
The reasons behind all of my art in the last few years, my exhibition work, the street art, my blog, teaching myself new ways of creating and expressing myself, has been a mixture of a desire to ask questions and a desire to ‘create’. As though the creating forms the questions or discovers them, as though the act of fulfilling my creative desire is answering something too.
Nina Power writes clearly and succinctly about elements of modern feminism and its current (unhelpful) depiction as a term for all. She raises some good questions about how the term is used and also about how our current western societal structures continue to reinforce and also provide new limitations on us all, men and women alike.
I am filling journal after journal at the moment and have ideas pouring onto the page about where I can go with my art. I was at first surprised by how theoretical I wanted to get. But I guess the only way I can ask deeper questions, or discover where my questions are coming from is to dig more! So alongside my usual love for living and experiencing, observing and creating I shall be diving head first into articles, books and reviews and meeting as many people as I can who like to talk life and ideas.
For that is my point. To connect, to listen, to explore and through this, from this and within this, create visual expressions of what I ask, find and learn.
ta ta for now.
Susan x