Re: [-empyre-] the invisible subject

[<aka.leafa@xtra.co.nz>]

Talofa all 
thanks for sharing that story. The whole notion of the invisible is one of huge interest to me as a visual artist.
I often find that the great minds on here discussing philosophic and particularly academic finer points of activities of artists both on and off the net leave me in the dust - I find that there is almost a cyber-invisibility that occurs every time I read.
This is not a terrible thing, because I always find the discussion inspires me to research some of the ideas that never occur to me. Big ups to those amazing minds... I love to feast on your words.
I guess there is always some space between various 'knowledges' and I believe that is where I operate best in the margins / at the limen.
this is the place where I situate myself because I can only understand that which enters my world and this is where I can share. Again- a place of relative comfort for me because being brought up in a culture which was intelligent in its own Samoan culture, I have absorbed the culture which I have chosen to view art with, and I guess all teh world with. 
My recent work is based in an arcadia of my own making, where my invisible GERMAN self is the prominent character. We - my Samoan and German selves co-exist in harmony, with an equal power base. Perhaps this sounds fake and silly, but here - my GERMAN self OLGA KRAUSE, gets to speak and make art and exist and purport to do all sorts of things in the body of this Samoan woman that everyone knows as Leafa. 
Unlike Et Al, L. Budd - Merilyn Tweedie - I operate from a this dual self because I actually AM known as a Samoan - Taufau Leafa Janice , but my birth certificate tells the world that I am a German Olga Hedwig Krause is no longer invisible.
thanks for the forum to share.
Tchuess
Leafa/ Olga


---- Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net> wrote: 
> 
> 
> When I was a little girl, I could not get my dad (an academic) to  
> admit that there was  such a thing as  women's history (he was a  
> professional historian).    He argued that to label history as  
> women's was to stereotype history.
> 
> At the same time it was agonizingly obvious that there were 'no women  
> artists'' . The grammar  that  insisted the term 'woman' was just a  
> subset (subject?) of the term 'man' made for a violent erasure.
> 
> in the fundamentalist community in which I grew up, the talent and  
> intellect required of an artist,  could never be actualized if born  
> female.  I began to devise,   visual art, as a tool  to bash a way   
> through the barriers.   I had to leave that community or die.   
> Because I learned this as a child  I experience life from a certain  
> remove.
> 
> When in the seventies  American culture put 'differential' into  
> descriptive language about human beings,  so that you always were  
> obliged to say, '\he or she' , instead of 'he' , this was a step  
> towards actual speech in real words, in actions, in art,  things  
> like, how 'exposure' and 'gaze ' are different for women than for men.
> 
> Being 'erased' in that culture caused a resort to trying any means  
> available, any resource, to create a communication.  Drawing.   
> Writing. Making grades so I could get the fuck out of there.   Living  
> in the 'bare' of being invisible.  how to make visible work when you  
> are invisible.
> 
> Art practice is an inflammatory speech against,  the making invisible  
> of the individual subject.
> 
> 
> 
> -cm
> 
> 
> www.christinamcphee.net
> www.strikeslip.tv
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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