EMMA EVELYN
ROEDER
Mindlessness
2014
This series is a physical response to the rigidity of the art/craft divide, which is built upon a foundation of devaluing the prestige of traditionally female creative enterprises. It addresses the illusory binaries of masculine/feminine, mind/body, and high art/functional creative expression.
The endemic nature of these concepts in the pedagogy of “high art” recycled in art history, theory, and studio technique courses drove me away from their orthodoxy, and the perfunctory hierarchies they establish and perpetuate. I chose “women’s work” fibers techniques to mold natural images that could then be used to examine aspects of the human condition in a tactile vocabulary uniquely my own.
Mind and Body
Summer 2013
The impetus for this series was acceptance into an undergraduate research program in which I had the opportunity to explore the art/craft divide. The works were created in tandem with a paper evaluating the facets of this schism, as well as its causes. I used it as a means of creating a dialog about how art history, Western philosophy, the non-existent masculine-feminine binary, and unquestioned societal systems of worth determination coalesce to dictate our value of art and craft, and our classification of products of creative expression into either category.