Self image is something I have battled all of my life.  I went abroad to Italy for the Spring semester and for the first time I told someone about my struggle.  I confided in one of my professors and he really helped me get through it.  That was how I started the installation project.  If I had only fallen into an actual eating disorder for a few months and taken three times as long to get out of it, but had suffered self confidence my whole life, I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for girls/women who have suffered from the actual disorder for much longer.  The craziest part to me was how quiet I had remained about the whole ordeal.  I am  very open person and I can usually talk about anything, but this was so taboo I didn’t feel comfortable sharing it even with my best friend.  I realized that I needed to share my experiences with a lot of people.  Even though not everyone goes through an eating disorder, most all people feel self conscious at some point or another and I want to help people understand that it is okay and it is normal to feel that way but it is also important to ignore that nasty voice inside of your head and be proud of who you are. 

      Since the installation in Italy I have shared my experience with many people and it has been amazing to see how many people have opened up and shared a similar experiences with me; some for the first time.  So I spent my last semester of college working on reinstalling the art and adding to it.

      In the final installation I had two videos and 12 photographs along with a dramatic entrance.  When you walked into the installation you were in a hallway of sorts there was a black plastic runner for you to walk on and on the sides of it were pieces of white paper with quotes from real people about their struggle with self confidence.  The hall was dark and the quotes were lit up by electric luminaries.  I chose luminaries because of the ties to quiet and thoughtfulness that they carry.  Luminaries also are a strong symbol of reflection and the goal was to have the viewers reflect on their own insecurities and to empathize with people who are self conscious.

      At the end of the hall you entered the greenhouse which was also dark because the installation only took place at night.  Directly in front of you was the “Large” video projected onto a white screen, to the left hanging were 4x6ft pixelated pictures from the video.  The runner to walk on was placed far away from the video and the photos to be physically distant as they are metaphorically distant.

      To the right of the video was a hanging wall of black plastic.  If you followed the runner to go around it you would first come to a row of black boxes with key holes on the front.  Inside of the boxes were the images from the “small video”  The runner was close to the boxes and you had to kneel or squat to view the photos because I wanted you to be physically and metaphorically close to these images.  At the end of the runner was a larger box with a keyhole on the front that contained the “small” video.


If you have any questions feel free to email me and ask!


Thank you,

JQ

The Installation

The Video in the Box

     The first piece is a series of nude photos that I had turned into a video.  Each photo was very vulnerably posed with no private parts being shown nor the face.  The photos were made larger than the video screen and moved about the screen in the video to give the sense of motion or wandering eyes.  The video was contained inside of a black box with nothing but a keyhole on the front which you had to kneel to look through to see the video and you had to put on head phones to hear the audio.  My intention is to show that this is something very secret, you would not see this nor hear what she has to say unless you were spying on her in her most intimate setting. It is also to put the viewer in a submissive state where they are interacting with the artwork and hopefully feeling uncomfortable because if I can evoke that emotion then I can also evoke empathy from the viewer for the girl in the video since what she is feeling is very clearly discomfort.  I had the same intention for the miniature boxes with the still images from the video.


    The second part of the installation is large scale pixelated photos and a large scale video.  The video is of a woman fully clothed who is supposed to be ambiguous, possibly she is the same girl from the other video.  This woman is not showing her discomfort however, she seems quite confident and very proud of her clothes and the things she uses to make herself feel more comfortable.  The video and the photos are supposed to represent what she is willing to show people and how stark a contrast it is from how she really feels inside.  The photos are pixelated for many reasons, I will touch on two.  One, I want to draw the viewer away from the photo because metaphorically you are not close to her and who she really is.  Two, by pixelating the photo she is no longer an individual human being, she is just some woman, any woman.

The Projected Video