I can say that I sway

Why do you leave for so long?
I am not saying that I am forever sad, but sometimes it comes, and it lingers smoothly under my skin.
I don't even know who you are, but I miss you.

I am not saying that my body is hollow, but some connections have not been sparkled.

I can say that I flow and that I sway. But in my dances I swirld and swirl and swirl. I don't want to stop. And all air is dark around me. Moist.
The air is thick but I swirl and swirl and swirl.
I don't want to stop, the air could get thicker.Stop me.But you won't. No one will. Stop me from swirling around. Because I will do it forever. Swirling in moist thick air.

I will be so kind I will even

aaah pixelation. how I love you

You look and you don't see

We had a wax workshop in uni a few months ago where I tryed cutting out magazine images and moulding wax around both sides of the paper untill they were about 1 cm thick. I was trying to show how we look at things but never see the whole picture, we never scratch the whole surface, be it a person, a situation, problems around the world, wars, what sorrounds us.

I didn't really think much about them the next few months. The other day I was clearing up some stuff in my studio and I brought theese sculptures (or whatever definition could be more suitable) home. Because of the lack of surface space on my desk and shelves I put them up against the window. I did this at night so all the light was coming from inside the house.

The next day there was light from outside (this tends to happen during the day) and you could see the image from the opposite side of the paper through the side of the paper that you were looking at.

This really worked with the message I was trying to get out because it shows how there is more to what we see than the surface.

So now I want to do something with this and create some new sculptures, but I don't know how or what images to use, or if I should use text. Maybe the good thing about them is that I didn't know I was doing them and I should just leave it at that. But I can't so I need to try and see what happens

Maybe what I really like about them is the surprise element. hmmm, what to do with this now?

Mona Hatoum

Found an artist called Mona Hatoum a few days ago whilst doing research. She transforms the familiar object into something foreign and threatening, using hair and skin, metal, textiles and soap, home objects and mass produced objects.
She was born in Beirut, daughter of palestinian parents and has been living in London since 1975.

She caught my attention because I think my work relates to hers in the way she uses familiar objects and mass produced things to point out the fragility of the individual. There is the obvious difference in the scale of her work and the way she transforms theese objects into something which provoques an uneasy feeling to the viewer.

Regardless of my opinion, her work is really unique and it is well worth going to her exhibition at the White Chapel Gallery in London (I think it is from the 25th of February until the 2nd of April).

It Lies

Shape shifting skin
And his mouth is made of clouds

Watch,
See the light dancing
Upon the fields of her flesh

Dances of all
Dances of nothing

Salute the sun
It lies between her thighs

Mandalas

The last few months have been quite intense for me. Actually, the last year or so has been quite intense. Everything is constantly changing and I used to find that hard to deal with.

I am only going on about this because it relates to my project, this is not one of those my life is so hard poor me kind of posts. Life is hard, deal with it.
Anyway, I remebered watching Seven Years in Tibet when I was younger and I always had the image of the Tibetan Monks building this sand mandala, that took them ages to build and then just got destroyed.
So now that my life is so full of changes and surrealism I decided to try and make a few sand mandalas to exercise my patience and ability to let go.

What fascinates me about them is that they are made in such detail that they can take weeks to build. They are made with ground up rocks, or coloured sand and are traditionally a ritual to simbolize the buddhist belief in the transitory nature of material life.
They are made using small funnels and scrapers or an istrument called chakpur (metal tubes with grated surface that vibrate and the vibration makes the sand flow) and are built from the centre onwards.
The ritual is complex, consisting of various phases: purification, centering, orientation, construction, absorption and destruction.

The destruction bit fascinates me. To a lot of people it doesnt make sense, why would you build something that takes you ages and then get rid of it? It is about embracing change and what you build has taught you something, so the physical evidence of it is not needed.

Above is a picture of my first mandala. Only took me 5 hours to make, using a spoon, a card and glitter (I couldnt find any sand, so it seemed like a good substitue. I hate glitter and it was all over me, but one has to sacrifice oneself sometimes). Next time, better tools.

And also there is a film of me destroyng it, which took about 5 minutes. Felt good.

By the way

By the way, there will be a lot of spelling mistakes so deal with it.
I still say words like basil and pasty wrong and some words are just written in misterious ways to me, so be patient because I have to be.

AND

the time of my posts is wrong. I dont really write posts at 5 o'clock in the morning unless I had a very good (or bad) night out and this was not the case.

Glad that is clear.

Indigenous Crap

This is a photo of a costume I made as part of my practise.

The idea behind this project was that in the west we now worship material life more than we worship any god. Objects have become our new idols

I decided to make a costume out of things I purchased in the pound shop. Most of it is slowly desintegrating and falling apart, showing how transient material life is.
After I finished the costume I performed a "tribal" dance and filmed it. Lots of bits fell on the floor and the costume made very interesting noises but I am still working on the films, so maybe i'll ulpoad them at some later point in time.

So basically I spent a lot of time doing something that worships the ready-made

Number one, twothousand and eleven

So it begins...