via Beautiful Decay
For the artist Eliza Bennett, her flesh is her medium; in embroidering her palm with thick threads, she hopes to explore the ways in which we view gender roles. Her hand, swollen and bruised by her own careful work, is titled “A Woman’s Work Is Never Done,” and her gruesomely precise handiwork serves to remind the viewer of the strife of women laborers, many of whom are paid far less than their male counterparts.
Embroidery, like most traditionally female crafts, is often belittled and considered frivolous, but Bennett’s representation of women’s work is urgently and painfully profound. By literally — and unflinchingly — penetrating her own epidermis, the artist subtly subverts the notion that the efforts of women are superficial or shallow.
Building upon these themes of gender constructs, Bennett’s project blurs the lines between the private realm, coded female, and the public realm, coded male. In many ways, her skin serves as the bridge between the internal self and the external world; in embroidering it, she makes a public spectacle of her own personal narrative. As if reading her own palm, she traces its lines in various soft colors, creating intricate patterns and granting certain patches of flesh both psychological and aesthetic importance.
Bennett’s pointed social critique of ideas of femininity is made stronger by the intimate nature of the work. Feminist scholar Betty Friedan once explained that in the battle for gender equality, the personal lives of women must be made political, that internal struggles must be made visible. “A Woman’s Work Is Never Done” is a poignantly simple execution of this idea; here, Bennett weaves a painful visual story onto her hand, stretching it outwards for public consideration. (via Hi Fructose, Design Boom, and anti-utopias)
Baconcheese burger
March 24, 2014 at 2:30 am
Sorry, but in physical work most of men are better than women. And doing self harm, doesn’t help anyone. Not even a buddhist monk who burned himself to death. If you really want to make a difference, then create a company that pays equal. These things never take into consideration that woman and man can have a same job, but the man can have better results/more experience hence he is paid more.
CVLT Nation
March 25, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Women do 2/3rds of the work in this world, and much of it is unpaid, according to the United Nations. Men have created a world where they say “Men are better at this than women” and other men nod their heads in agreement, and then they hand each other higher paychecks than their female counterparts. It is the most assinine notion in the world. And it’s a little more complex than just “paying equal,” – it’s about the social mores that have an effect on business decisions. And are you saying that men are better seamstresses than women are? Better at embroidery? Please, attach a photo of your embroidery skills, I am sure they are better than mine. And then go do a little research into the wage gap.
This uneducated comment is a great example of the actual statistical facts, which demonstrate that in every country that allows women to be educated, women outnumber men in both university enrollment and graduation. The gap increases even more when you look at graduate school rates. So women, at least at a professional level, are more highly qualified for many positions, and yet are still paid less – because of millennia of favoring men for such positions. Keep in mind that only in the past century have women been allowed to work in professions.
Comments like yours piss me off, but at the same time they make me happy, because what I read between your lines is fear of a future where women are the ones calling the shots. Because that’s what’s happening, make no mistake.
http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/facts_figures.html?#2