POLITICAL RESISTANCE AND THE ACCUMULATION OF PHYSIC PAIN

BECKY FLANDERS
LUMP
FEBRUARY 2 – MARCH 10, 2018
RESOURCE > RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA

Resist! – us

What could be more futile or insane than to create
inner resistance to something that already is?

– Eckhart Tolle

I have been thinking lately about my work of the last decade in the context of the recent resurgence of feminist resistance, and also in the context of spiritual surrender, and trying to reconcile those two things. The title term is borrowed from the spiritual teacher of Oprah fame, Eckhart Tolle, and refers to the psychic accumulation of pain that most people carry with them. Tolle conceives of this pain as a semi-autonomous entity that attracts and feeds on further pain. He believes that identifying with this pain body, whether your individual pain or a collective cultural history of pain, serves only to perpetuate suffering in the self and others. I feel that this rings with truth. Yet how do we understand and teach the history of violence and inequity without carrying forward this pain? What is the relationship between political resistance and psychic pain? Can we enact change in the world without perpetuating the inner resistance that causes pain, and if so, how?

For the past decade, I have made photographs that explore the construction of gender utilizing the “female” body, often my own. The works are steeped in mythic imagery, a deep view of time, and the sexual sacred. Earliest bodies employed large format film photography to investigate female standing urination, something I realized as a young person I was capable of with ease. They were an attempt to take the constructed feminine to the level of absurdity and induce a shifting position between objective and subjective views of the feminine. I prefer analog interventions rather than digital to produce the desired result in my photographs, and now even when using a digital camera I employ techniques such as kaleidoscopes, handmade filters, glass eyes or handmade mandalas. I hand build kaleidoscopes that fracture the space, render it geometrically confusing, alter body symmetry or disturb the sense of scale. I insert a mandala into the vulva so that it appears to be looking back at you. My photos have always spilled over into nature, either as context or as subject matter. I often feel that the deepest thread running through all of my works is wildness of spirit, combined with a deep intellectual skepticism and refusal to submit to any unearned authority.

To some the politically charged hand embroidered text pieces would seem to be made by a different hand or mind. I think they are an outgrowth of this same wildness of spirit, a refusal to take anyone’s word for it. They are an attempt to slow down the speed of digestion of the text and the thought behind it, and are a response to the blisteringly fast memetics of social media today. I choose snippets of text that stir me one way or another, or sometimes that strike me with their simultaneous incongruity, and I remove them from their context. Then I spend roughly an hour per letter embroidering  them by hand, allowing my mind to tumble the thought like a polished rock until I have seen it from many angles. I think this is an attempt to dissociated my self from the spirit of the text, to stop to investing the text or idea with selfness, whether in agreement, opposition or any other way. I am not always successful with this dissociation. However, the statements are not necessarily “meant” so much as put forward for contemplation, and I feel that there are many competing voices present in the various pieces. As I witness the increasing incommensurable divide between the political “left” and the “right” in the United States and the world today, I feel the need to investigate my own knee jerk responses and triggers. I know that I am not immune to being brainwashed, emotionally tricked, or intellectually swindled, particularly  if I move too quickly. By dissociating my identity from the pain or trust of one side or another, I attempt to understand what is really going on. I believe that it is only by building a bridge to transcend the political divide that we will ever overcome the current state we are in.

A note on the explicit nature of the body works:

To some the human body is itself an offensive thing to behold, but this is a perspective that I do not share.  That which we were given by nature or god is just that, our vessel, and I think it should be honored as such. I believe that the suppression of healthy sexuality produces violence and causes more non-consensual encounters than it prevents. I believe that the shrouding of the female body with mystery and the hard stop against genital revelation in American culture promotes ignorance and misogyny so deep as to extend to places such as medicine and law. Across the globe, ancient myths abound of women revealing their genitals like one would blandish an evil eye: to fend off invading armies, to shame the guilty, to calm the sea or to make crops grow. To reveal that which is hidden as a form of magic remains a power of the subversive feminine today. Many of the bodies in my photographs are returning the gaze from between the legs, as if from an additional seat of consciousness, akin to a third or fourth eye, alluding to alternative ways of knowing.

Becky Flanders is an artist and entrepreneur based in Tampa, FL. Born in the Washington DC area in 1980, she received her BS in Artificial Life and the Digital Arts from UMBC in 2002, and her MFA in Photography from USF in 2009. She is a leading member of the photography collective Fountain of Pythons, and a member of the all-female curatorial collective CUNSTHAUS. Her work has been exhibited from Miami to  Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Japan, and Australia. Her works have recently been accepted into the permanent collection of the Kinsey Institute. Her focuses are the mythic feminine, transcendent and ecstatic states, sex positivity, and the relationship between subjects and states.
beckyflanders.com

Since 1996, Lump has expanded the possibilities for artists and curators through the support of ambitious projects in exhibition, performance, research and documentation while broadening the community’s exposure to new artistic practices and dialogue.  In 2016, Lump officially became a 501(c)3 non profit organization. 

As an arts organization created to engage and support artists and their audiences, our mission includes a multifaceted approach: To support artists who take risks and help them realize new ambitious projects; to coordinate a strong support system for visual artists; to promote relationships between artists and the community; and to increase access to the visual arts and arts education for the citizens of North Carolina.
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All images courtesy the artist.

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