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Artist Exhibitions:
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 The Out of the
Inside, Lubbock Underwood
Center for the Arts, March-May
2005 The Out of the
Inside, Master of Fine Art
Thesis Exhibition, Hiestand
Lee Gallery
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2007 Photography Expose,
Art Depot, Curator Ryder
Richards, Lubbock, TX
2005 2005 Open Exhibition,
Photomedia Center, www....
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Artist Statement for Stacy Slaten
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The Out of the Inside
In the tension of daily life, I find I must wear many social masks and play roles that often do not fit. Sometimes the odd fit causes psychological pain. Sometimes the masks, roles, and resulting tension seem to fragment my internal self-image, and I get stuck. I feel uncomfortable with the pressure of the roles contemporary culture wants to place upon me, particularly in regards to beauty and body adornment. I have also an ethical dilemma that social pressures and modern media often advertise how I should feel about my inner and outside self by forcing products for my use in order to make a quick buck. Thus, I find myself interested in how art can produce awareness and thought towards social change, and how the human psyche has to play between the borders or binaries of in and out, public and private, concealing and revealing, on-stage and off, through the roles we play in an increasingly fragmented existence.
I attempt to create visionary pathways towards growth through a private performance that starts from a reaction of pain or tension from daily life and moves toward a vision of feminine empowerment. I have a vision of breaking harmful cultural programming or stereotypes of social behavior in order to more fully form my own personal identity. I build on the limitations of social roles, breaking rules to display female deviant behavior in the face of numbing conformity while acknowledging at the same time the desire to conform or fit into a larger sphere, to belong. Each individual image attempts to acknowledge the place of each emotional fragment or experience while all existing together as a greater whole.
The form comes in a private, ritualized performance that uses the physical, nude body as the canvas to portray the intangible, psychological interior. The body is nude to symbolize complete vulnerability, risky courage, and advertise a powerful body not seen regularly in the media. At the same time, the nude body can also conceal as it reveals by serving as a locus of confrontation or distraction to the viewer. By also denying the viewer the public performance, I also conceal myself but reveal information through layers of digital manipulation to heighten the psychological feel of the original photoshoot the viewer would not see if performed in public. The dance between concealing and revealing plays throughout the making of the work, just as we dance in daily living.
The ritual of the performance is the stimulus that gets me to a place of greater freedom, that ‘unsticks’ the stuck soul, towards maybe a more purer, primitive self. The ritual is the energy, the organic machine that drives the psyche to perform a tangible act to signify an interior change.
While also intuitive, the markmaking, ritualized movement and dance help break bonds of cultural roles that do not fit the psyche. The use of beauty products comes into play in untraditional manners, going against the original purpose, and giving a visual expression in defying traditional engendered codes of conduct, while making use of the decorative devices to express my own interpretation of power and beauty and the obsessive edge it often takes. I am brought back from the swing of the extremes by connecting back to myself, emulating the process of struggle. I do not want to forget my ancestral memory, the legacy of power. I am in essence the descendant of the descendant who was left bleeding but alive on the sidelines after the filter of violent struggle for survival swept through deep time.
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