Saya Woolfalk

Saya Woolfalk (Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. … Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women’s lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity. -from her bio

Top 2 rows: The Empathics, video stills, 2012

3rd row: ChimaTEK Life Products, Virtual Chimeric Space, 2015

4th and 5th rows: ChimaTEK Beta Launch, Installation shot from exhibition, 2014

source: http://www.sayawoolfalk.com/

Works that caught my eye when I went to see the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, curated by Grayson Perry

The process of my mask over Summer term. It took ridiculously longer than I thought it would and I’ve considered starting again as I’m not particularly happy with it.

But i’ve decided that if I start again I’ll spend another month trying to create something ‘perfect’ – so instead I will edit and embellish the current one until I do like it. Starting with the removal of the orange fringe on the forehead

Rammellzee, artist and musician – pioneered ‘Gothic Futurism’, appeared in public in home made ‘armour’ and also created “cosmic characters” (times), inspired by Samurai warriors

“Rammellzee was an elusive, self-mythologizing figure who was rarely photographed without wearing one of his elaborate science-fiction-inspired masks and costumes” … “He cast himself as an urban philosopher whose overarching theory, which he called Gothic Futurism, posited that graffiti writers were trying to liberate the mystical power of letters from the strictures of modern alphabetical standardization and that they had inherited this mission from medieval monks” – Times

Top: http://radicalpresenceny.org/?page_id=1790

Bottom: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/arts/design/rammellzee-exhibition-new-york.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/arts/02rammellzee.html

Aldo Lanzini makes really interesting masks out of textiles, thinking about taking on board his ideas when constructing my own textile mask

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWdkHOMXphg

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, The Walk to Dover, 2005

At the time she was known as Lali Chetwynd

https://vimeo.com/98127367 video piece documenting the walk

http://www.studiovoltaire.org/exhibitions/archive/lali-chetwynd/ info about the walk

A 7 day expedition from London to Dover in full costume, emulating the narrative of David Copperfield. The group attempts to live off the land and draws parallels between class structure and debt in Victorian England with today’s “credit card culture”

Think about: act of walking as pilgrimage – the manner of documentation (edited photos & footage accompanied by narrative, sound and voiceover) – use of costume to build character – ritual/repeated aspects like gathering food

Goat Festival on the Greek island Skyros, descended from celebrations of Dionysus. People dress in furry costumes with bells and dance, there’s also a lot of cross-dressing in honour of the god Dionysus/Bacchus, whose gender was fluid

—> ritual, procession, ceremony, performance, masks

Image source: https://www.bordersofadventure.com/skyros-island-greece-mischief-and-masquerade-of-carnival/

Info: https://inews.co.uk/culture/bacchus-uncovered-ancient-god-of-ecstasy-bbc4-tv-review-gender-fluidity-transgender-dionysus/

Thread Stories, crochet masks from her Instagram, which she uses as an artist’s sketchbook

https://www.instagram.com/threadstories/

Thread Stories (real name unknown) – makes masks out of crochet, am considering using her work as a inspiration for my mask 2.0

Could i crochet? plus i want to incorporate fleshy structure, thinking about using tights to create the effect

https://vimeo.com/251136805

(Source: https://vimeo.com/)

Mark Dion:

Top Left: The Bureau of Remote Wildlife Surveillance, 2006
Top Right: Ichthyosaurus, 2003
Middle 2: Mandrillus Sphinx, 2012, (detail shot on right)
Penultimate: Den, 2012
Bottom 2: Society of Amateur Ornithologists, 2010 (exterior and interior)

“Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. … Appropriating archaeological, field ecology and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences.“

source:

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artists/mark-dion/series-sculpture-and-installation

http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artists/mark-dion/series-outdoor-public-projects

——> creation of narrative worlds – fantastical yet relevant – construction of imagined space – the Anthropocene