Spirituality In the Time of Covid-19 or Post-Hegemonic Spirituality In the Time of NEO-NOW, is an interdisciplinary piece comprising video, sound, printing, drawing, installation and writing. It is a sacred space representing the creation myth of Blodwynnismn, a religion that focuses on Equality of Divinity. By rejecting organizational systems, it functions outside ideas of hierarchical prescription thus relinquishing problematic moralization and power dynamics. Instead of worshiping a being, one believes in the “force” of creation/destruction, which is part of us as we are a part of it. The worship is in the act of creating which the viewer participates in by co-creating the space as they enter, activating it with their own world views. This transcendental space is filled with made and found objects, color, texture, light and projections but it’s the act of creating this sacred area that demonstrates a spiritual practice and how I worship.
Gotta Keep It Temporary, Digital image of installation, 2020, projection on painting and drawings, Photo by K. Strader
Fight Those Fairies 01, Digital image of installation, 2020 melted plastic wine glasses and mirrors, Photo by K. Strader
Coupling, Digital image of installation, 2020, glasses, plastic wine glasses, pebbles, mirror, and reflection, Photo by K. Strader
Psych Meds And the Jabberwocky, Digital image of installation, 2020, pill caddy, plastic glasses mirror, and reflection, Photo by K. Strader
Rocky Mountain Hi!, Digital image of installation, 2020, plastic mountain range reflected in mirror, Photo by K. Strader
Fight Those Fairies 02, Digital image of installation, 2020, melted plastic wine glasses and mirrors, Photo by K. Strader
Don’t Look At It Like It’s, Blue, Digital image of installation, 2020, Photo by K. Strader
Don’t Look At It Like It’s, Red, Digital image of installation, 2020, Photo by K. Strader
Don’t Look At It Like It’s, Red, Digital image of installation, 2020, Photo by K. Strader
The D-mans Inside, Digital image of installation, 2020 painting, plastic cups, glass cups, plastic bowls, glass fish bowls, and pebbles, Photo by K. Strader
Tenets of Blodwynn-Ism
Blodwyn-Ism: The core belief is for me to create with Joy! The name comes from the Welsh; Blodwynn, which is the drag name that Elton John gave to Taron Egerton after he so embodied the rock legend in the movie Rocketman. This should explain my tendencies towards camp.
-As belief is crucial to everyone; allow another to believe in their higher power without dismissing or trying to convert them.
-Equality in Divinity; you are part of the Divine force of creation, having come into being by it and having the capacity for it, one cannot be subservient when unified with it.
-It is Force that creates/Force that destroys; Force that is the Divine. To worship one must create, whether it be creating a meal, an emotional bond, a concept, art or a child; anything that comes into existence is created by this force, so take absolute Joy in that creation.
-This is not a replacement for current core beliefs, but a lens with which to examine beliefs.
Force is the Essence of Divinity and used to either create or destroy
-That does not mean “creation” as typically referred to when discussing religion, instead, it is the process of bringing “anything” into existence, whether through evolution, some magical being or a mother’s desire to paint; anything that becomes, was created. And that act is divine. Any being or force that creates or destroys uses the force of the Divine.
Religious structures
-Religious structures use moral doctrine as a tool to help people find a personal connection to a power greater than themselves. They provide explanations for not only who that higher power is (so that we can recognize it) It also provides blueprints for how to communicate, dwell with, and rely on that higher power. But, in doing this, they offer a set of desires we are to substitute for or own.
Morality
-I’m discussing morality in terms of guidelines for living— often prescribed by a deity but collected and interpreted by an organization that offers them as right. When there is a cultural Hegemony, these religious morals become social morals of right and wrong or proper behavior, but when one enters a different culture, who decides which morals are universal?.
Females
-The definition I’m using for females comes from Andrea Long Chu’s essay “The Impossibility of Feminism”. She claims someone is female by; “any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another.” Part of her argument is “Everyone is female, and everyone hates it…” (pg. 151-152)
-Why do I choose to use this definition of female? It both highlights the gender inequality in the religion I grew up in, while ultimately equalizing both men and women under a Deity. Religions are organized based on a set of guidelines for salvation, rules which often demand acts of martyrdom and sacrifice of self-will which ultimately feminizes its members. And when a divine being puts men in positions of power, men feel right in perpetuating power over women as they unconsciously try to subvert their own femaleness.
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Or
Tying Religion To Process, To Meaning
-Form and materiality are central considerations in my work. The objects arranged on the floor surround hanging forms and function on multiple levels. Issues surrounding motherhood, religion, cultural expectation and voice are visible in these everyday items. Old plastic cups stacked to resemble lamps, quickly lose recognizable form as an ever changing light moves through primary and secondary colors. When it hits the blue spectrum, the shift causes whole sections of items to blend into the background. Where the light has been reflected instead of absorbed, the room becomes filled with bright shapes lacking any referential meaning before the light reaches a red hue. Now those shapes begin to grow, mass restoring itself with the changing light as though melting in reverse.
Seems an Apt Metaphor for Motherhood to Me
-Part of my practice has always been to work with the found materials. I grabbed a shower curtain, cheap knock off satin, a hula hoop and added in some rough broad cloth for weight while experimenting with building mountain forms. Using different types of fabrics I’m playing with the paradox of expectations placed on women in the conservative culture I’m from. One must make do with what they have, be crafty, hardworking and feminine, but above all keep a smile on.
Label Me; Artist, Lover, Mother
Or
Function, Performance and Consequences?
-This abstracted landscape plays between the lines of metaphoric and concrete as one is asked to draw connections between mundane items formally arranged into mounds that reflect light next to a seven day pill caddy, or a lamp on a table that isn’t a lamp but plastic cups stacked together with a lampshade. There is a reverence in the care I take arranging these items. I strive to achieve moments of interest throughout the work, using them to layer in personal and pseudo universal meaning. The gaudy, chintzy, reflective materials raise questions of privilege, excess, and waste as they swallow the viewer. And though not the discussion I strive for, I don’t ignore its validity. However, the intentionality of camp in the materials and colorful light, in tandem with frayed edges and melted plastic wine glasses, grounds the items in a reality familiar to motherhood by their threadbare, no longer highly aesthetic state.
-Contemplating internal landscapes and transcendence, one may ask what is the conceptual space I’m trying to share? I’m building a phenomenon of “being” between the physical body we occupy and an existence where spirit and intuition dwell. While in the space, the multiplicity of meanings surrounding objects fades out of existence when the transitioning light alters what hues we can perceive, leaving nothing but formal relationships. But, as quickly as meaning is stripped away, a new mode of understanding begins to encroach onto the room directed by the personal relationship of the viewer in the space. These forced changes are meant to make one conscious of how tenuous meaning is when dealing with concepts of transformation and spiritual.