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Exhibition: The Best of 2021
Art No: PP1421
Artwork Width: 70 CM (28 INCHES)
Artwork Height: 90 CM (36 INCHES)
Year Created: 2021
Medium: Ink
Surface: Paper
Sweet Little Nothings : You are because l am not
This work is part of series called What Lies Beneath. ‘What lies beneath’ is a double ‘comprendre’ where the word ‘lies’ plays the role of both noun and verb. It is both a statement and a question. As a noun, it asks us to consider the complex web and weave of lies that form the basis of a philosophically discriminatory view of the world through the creation of the other. What are the lies told over long periods of time that become embedded in the psyche and emerge as ‘truths’? As a verb, it asks us to look beneath the surface of things - opinions, news, history, culture, religion, philosophy - to see what is really there, to uncover the truth that lies beneath.
In each monotype, the process is symbolic of the way women have been disappeared from the human story. The image begins with an under-drawing, in this case Camille Claudel, over which is rolled a layer of ink, obscuring the drawing completely, symbolic of the way Claudel herself has been assigned to obscurity due to her gender. This layer of black is then removed by running the plate through the press, leaving behind a grey background which is then worked on to create the final image. Here the grey that is left behind when the ‘truth’ of black is taken way is symbolic of the shades of grey generated by our shadowed post-truth eras. The figure of a young girl forms the cutout, speaking literally to the exclusion of many girls from participating freely in expressing their potential. The space of the cutout is cut and stitched with red thread, for the wound of the unattainable dream. Here, the three stitches mark the three decades Claudel spent in an asylum, a sculptor of genius barred from doing the work she loved.
You are because I am not, is a subversion of the African term ubuntu, meaning “I am because you are.” The title alludes to the unspoken ‘truths’ and unconscious assumptions that lie beneath the post-truth histories that inform doctrine, laws, behaviour, attitudes and philosophies. The post-truth history such a the role of women in society, or for that matter, of men and how each gender treated by society as a whole. Camille Claudel’s art and impact on the art world has only recently been fully recognized. For a long time, she was more famous as the muse and lover of Rodin, yet remained unacknowledged for her part in creating his most successful works. In a deeply patriarchal world, her struggles cannot be dissociated from her gender. Her affair with Rodin, her eccentric behaviour while tolerated by society in male artists, was ultimately punished by her own family who committed her to an asylum where she remained in obscurity for thirty years until her death at 78.
Addressing the Post-truth Era: Post-truth is an adjective defined by the Oxford Dictionary and named as its word of the year in 2016 as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
The question I ask myself, as a human being - especially as a female of the species - is this, When has the human world not been subject to post-truth histories, philosophies and politics. As Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen argues, post-truth is a predicament in which speech is increasingly detached from the factual infrastructure, proposing we approach post-truth as a crystallization of a longer trajectory of devaluing the truth. The term may be new, but it’s practice is an old one.
By framing post-truth as a new era - where the truth is manipulated more quickly, dismantled and disseminated; is more opinionated and less concerned with factual correctness; with more opinions shared on a wider scale than in previous eras - is to leave unacknowledged the impact of a human story that is post-truth. Mankind, not humankind, has written a post-truth history - a story of empires, conquest, war. Or as Jared Diamond puts it - Guns, Germs and Steel. There is no ‘herstory’ or ‘ourstory’. We have arrived at this particular post-truth era by way of thousands of years of silencing, exclusion and the manipulation of both rational and factual truth to suit societal institutions of power.
Post-truth versions like so many sweet little nothings recur in the human story, each time in a new guise. It is this that fools us into forgetting its deep roots in our various civilizations. It also denies all that has been purposefully suppressed, and ultimately, excised to produce this exclusionary version of the human story we call history.
In the documentary Feminists: What Were They Thinking women were asked what they would do if men disappeared from the world for a day. The answers were surprisingly simple: to go out and walk the streets without fear. Without fear of what I’m wearing, how I’m walking, how loud I am, what I’m saying and who I am with, or on my own. I’d be safe. Recently, a female friend of mine in a small town, walked to the pharmacy to get some medicines, and received untoward and threatening attention related what she was wearing. Leggings and an over-shirt. I didn’t feel safe, she said on arriving back at the house. In a world without post-truth history, she would.
Our post-truth history has normalized and psychologically embedded discrimination: an attitude towards gender and race, sexuality and nature that is deleterious to the well-being of human species and our planet. Camille Claudel’s story is particularly poignant because in spite her wealth of talent, vision and originality, of her support from her father (not her family), from a patron of the arts and even from Rodin, to whom she might have well uttered the words of the title, she was broken by the relentlessly dominating attitudes perpetrated by the post-truth of patriarchy.
These works specifically address the post-truth history that excises women’s presence from the human story. The sweet little nothings that move through our consciousness unquestioned yet maintain the exclusionary status quo. Women are not the only targets of a post-truth history, but they are targeted across the globe: across time and civilizations, race and culture, women have been prohibited from participating fully in life - in art, philosophy, sciences, literature, politics, the workplace. If we are concerned today about the acceptability of lies parading as truth, then we may need to ask, If the story of half of our species is not told, is disappeared from the record, then what is a half-truth world? For this is what we have, half the truth. We are left to live the lie. The rest is silence. The post-truth story.
My final question prompting this work, Can we restore the truth without restoring the past? And as an act of restoration, do we as individuals have the courage to see what lies beneath?
Sources and References
The film Feminists: What Were They Thinking is a Netflix documentary released in 2018 directed by Joanna Demetrakis.
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Tampere.
The quote used here is from his article Defining Post-truth: Structures, Agents, and Styles published by E-International Relations in 2018.
Many sources were used in researching Camille Claudel, most notably The Art Story.
Original Price: Upon Request