DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

I met Bastienne Schmidt at the beginning of the semester when the gallery that I work for opened a show called Topos which was her studies of texture and surface areathough multi-media pantings and drawings as well as watercolors. She explained to me that her role as a woman artist is to represent and explore the various identities that interconnected into the idea of woman.   Her latest project, Home Stills, are more than just photographs they are visual explorations of the universality of womanhood and various identities of woman in motherhood, in suburbia, and as “ the other”. Above is one of the photographs that will be featured in the exhibition, which to me is one of the most striking.

For her Home Stills series the ideas inspire the images. Schmidt delves into in-depth philosophical questions emerging from her lived experiences and then translates these visually through intricately staged photographs.  Each photograph heightens the viewers’ awareness of the world familiar to them the world further informed by the phenomena that is woman's life.  This photograph confronts the isolation of the housewife. Shut up in the house all day she might believe that her life has been limited, restrained. For Schmidt, the vaccum represents restriction and repression. The vaccum cord and hose can only go so far these restrictions challenge the housewife, but not in the way that she desires to be challenged. The respession of perfection in suburbia means that one is not able to discuss anything freely, appearances matter. The housewife is subjected to repress her feelings of restriction in order to maintain a pristine reputation, but in moments of isolation and protection from the bright lights of the outside world, she can question, she can wonder, and she can wander in her well-educated mind hoping that her situation can be reversed.

 


 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.