Awakening

Abstract

Setting Michel Foucault's three modes of objectification as the main structure, this thesis explores the paradoxes and contradictions of societal conventions and beliefs that I observed as a social outsider, having spent a large amount of my life in a small religious group. In Foucault's opinion, power does not belong to the authority, but rather to the individuals who give power to the authority by subjecting themselves to systems of power. The individuals voluntarily devote themselves to earn their identification that the authority endows. My artistic intention is to bring out formless untold entities, the beings that fall out of larger stories, that do not belong to structures we recognize, that reside in the spaces between different beliefs upon which individuals construct their lives. I visualize concealed conditions, voices, hopes and desires so that they become effable, so that they become the objects of speech. It was just two years after I left the religious group that I came to Purchase as a student. From a certain point of view, my time in the religious group was wasted or devastated, because it was not socially productive and successful in the ways most people experience productivity and success. The time that I spend in the group is void only if I believe so. I believe I can create something positive out of my "void" space. That is a way to challenge a stagnated value and present a fresh perspective. That is what artists are supposed to do.