ORIANA FOX

www.orianafox.com

I admit it, I want to be like and look like many of the women I see on TV and in the movies, yet I am highly critical of them. I want them to more accurately represent my self and the women I know and admire. I feel similarly about the feminist artists of the 1970s. I respect the way they sought to own their own image, to be defined from within instead of without, but the 70s was a long time ago, so I cannot fully embrace their ethos either. I have to find my own, and that is what I try to do in my practice. By taking varied sources from films and TV, I explore my own perceived reflection in the images I see day to day, re-enacting them and altering them to further define myself and my place in representation and the history of art.

Art also gives me a way to justify my more embarrassing hobbies. I want to sew vaginal, womb-like forms out of lush smooth fabrics, I covet any excuse to wear curlers and crinoline, I fancy baking brownies and consequently, I need to work my abdominal muscles. As a contemporary artist, I can indulge in these guilty pleasures only if they can be defended conceptually. My main justification for succumbing to these physical urges has to do with the effect the portrayal of women in both popular culture and feminist art has on me, the way it attracts and repels me at the same time. In expressing my critique of both mass-produced femininity and the self-representation of 70s feminists (as well as by presenting myself as an antidote to those varying clichés) I get to bake my cake and eat it too.

- Oriana Fox