Choose two artists whose work addresses identity. Discuss a single work by each artist. Explain the ideas each artist is trying to represent and how they are expressed.
Lisa Honeywood
Word Count: 1,125
This essay will explain two artists’ works which address identity. By referring to context and influences I will be discussing Tracey Emin’s “My Bed” and Barbara Kruger’s “You Are Not Yourself”.
To begin with, I will talk about Tracey Emin’s “My Bed”. Well- known for her confessional and intimate art, Tracey Emin uses “My Bed” to reveal personal details of her life to captivate the audience with her expression of emotions. To be able to combine her work and her personal life has made it easy for her to have an intimacy with her viewers. She has shown us her own bed, which for most people is an escape from the difficulties of life on the outside. However, Emin opens up and shows even the most embarrassing things; empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, stained sheet covers, worn underwear and condoms. This represented the time in her life when she was suffering from suicidal depression, and did not get up from her bed for days. I believe that these ideas that she has created address identity, showing one particular side of her personality, baring her more intimate, yet obscene lifestyle which many people would keep private. I also believe that the bed being in such an open, empty space, could represent her loneliness at the time, and expresses that emotion of sadness in her identity.
Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, two performance artists, jumped on the bed with bare chests in order to improve the work. They called their performance “Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey's Bed”. The men also had a pillow fight on the bed to gain applause from the crowd. Their performance was seen as a sexual connotation; both men said they considered "a sexual act was necessary to fully respond to Tracey's piece.”
Prior to its Tate Gallery showing, the work had appeared elsewhere, including Tokyo, New York and London. Appearing in Tokyo, “My Bed” was shown in a long, rectangular room with windows on one side, a rope noose suspended from the ceiling and a wooden coffin box adjacent to it, beside which were two bound cases. A collection of blue paintings were arranged on the long wall, and the other wall had two blue neon signs. In these exhibitions Emin seems to be expressing the difficult period in her life, the noose and wooden coffin box represent the suicidal depression she was suffering from.
Tracey Emin seems to address society’s different identities as well as her own. It seemed to explore the ways in which this work might contain contexts of sexual politics, homelessness and displacement at the end of the twentieth century. Homelessness in Britain in the 1990’s was a growing problem. With waves of immigrants pouring into Britain during this period, living conditions steadily worsened. As the numbers of asylum seekers were seen to rise, homelessness became a common trend in the 1990’s and a major issue in the late twentieth century. “Shelter”, a charity particularly concerned with homelessness, defines it not just as sleeping rough, but as having access to only temporary, inadequate or unsafe accommodation. Young women are also put in a vulnerable group, at risk of homelessness and sexual predation. This is portrayed in Tracey Emin’s work, “My Bed” seen as an unsafe environment in which to be placed and reflects the identity of the homeless where they themselves cannot find their own personal space.
Barbara Kruger also seems to invoke identity in her work. During the socially troubled decades of the 60’s and 70’s Kruger began to take a deeper interest in the social and political movements of the time, feeling that such issues should be reflected in her designs as well. Kruger's instantly identifiable images explore different themes of power, identity, sexuality, representation and gender roles. Many of her works including “You Are Not Yourself”, question women's roles in our culture. Kruger's work is highly recognizable. She uses simple photographs and enlarges them. She then adds words to the photograph, manipulating the original meaning of the photographs. The theme that runs in most of her work is that she consistently uses black, white and red which makes her work very unique and noticeable. The phrases Kruger chooses juxtaposed the photographs and cause the viewer to question original standards placed before them. In relation to women, Kruger's work causes women to challenge how they are perceived, contradicting the idea that they are often over powered by men and the stereotypes placed by men. Phrases such as, "You are not yourself" force women to question the changes they must go through to be accepted in our society. Kruger's work forces the audience to look at women’s stereotypical identity, and tries to protest against this idea.
"I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't"- Barbara Kruger.
Her work, “You Are Not Yourself” (1982), is very striking. Kruger uses humour in her technique to emphasize a feminist point of view. The words ‘‘you are not yourself’’ are loosely laid over a photograph of a distressed woman looking into a shattered mirror. This is ironic because culture relies on a mirror to reflect reality. This mirror is cracked and without its reassurance, you are not yourself. Existence is questioned without the acknowledgment from the mirror. Somehow without the recognition of the mirror, both culture and existence are questioned. This then leads to the question why are you not yourself? It is possible that Kruger is indicating that you are not yourself because culture, ruled by the mirror and the media, implies that women should be something they can never be. Kruger has commented on the deceit of the ideal female image portrayed by the media and she revisits the stereotypical female identity in later piece “Super Rich/Ultra Gorgeous/Extra Skinny/Forever Young (1997)”. Kruger expresses female identity in her work and what has been conveyed by society on what women’s identity should be.
Conclusively, Emin and Kruger both demonstrate identity in their work in dissimilar ways. Emin uses her own identity in her work, but has created this piece in such a way that people can relate to it themselves. Kruger has created her piece as a whole outlook on society, which can also let people relate to it. Both seem to provoke the idea of the relationship between society and identity, and how people stereotypically judge each other. Both using powerful methods to entice the audience, I am keen on both artworks, both very simple yet powerful.
Bibliography
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/tracey-emin/articles/tracey-emins-my-bed/
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa667.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/ia/tridar/kruger.html
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_my_bed.htm
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