Starting July 18th, 2024, I took three photos of myself every day for 2 and a half months; one of my face, one of my hands, and one of my hips. I chose these parts of my body because they are the most anatomically different, thus, their function and relation to the outside world is different.
I was heavily inspired by Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture from 1972, a feminist photographic/performance art piece where she followed a 37 day diet plan from a women’s magazine and consistently documented the four sides of her body. She relates her changing figure to a Greek sculpture being carved from a block of marble.
Upon seeing Antin’s series, I became fascinated with the grid to serve as a document. In (insert title here), the repetition of forms emphasize the mundanity of time passing and forces the viewer to acknowledge the body’s growth, along with the cycles we engage in to manage it (both of which are ordinary and therefore, unseen). Women are expected to be groomed, always. They conduct these rituals of cutting and shaving, clipping and filing, a fresh face of makeup every day. I want to bring attention to the labor of these cycles and the way in which they mark the passage of time.
