SymbioticA

Kirsten Hudson

Further information

Country of origin

 Australia

Website

Email


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Kirsten Hudson is an artist philosopher fascinated by how excessive historical and classical western constructs of femininity can be re-deployed to produce strategic and perverse female spectacles, ‘available through the most radical or quietest of acts’.

Biography

Interested in questions regarding forms of female embodiment that allude to female invisibility, fragmentation and contradiction within western culture, Hudson's philosophical premise is that to ‘act like a woman’ is to embrace excessive historical and classical cultural constructs of femininity as a means to demonstrate the artificiality and fiction of an authentic feminine identity.

However, it should be noted that she is not particularly concerned with proposing new meanings for identity, sexuality or femininity, but instead is seduced by those disruptions and challenges that make problematic the very concept of femininity, femaleness and feminism within modern western discourses.

Research project

Mini flesh works

Mini flesh works engages with ‘how you see a body now’ by exploring issues surrounding the aesthetical, ethical, political and legal status of bodies and bodily matter.

Conflicts of interest and inconsistencies surrounding current bio-art practices and body image-based medical/fashion interventions and modifications are utilised in mini flesh works as a means to consider the legal and ethical implications of using the human body (or parts thereof) for artistic research purposes.

Using knowledge of traditional and contemporary textile techniques interwoven with cosmetic surgery procedures, tattooing techniques and tissue engineering processes mini flesh works (stage 1) creates tissue cultured lengths of skin and submits them to a variety of patternation, ornamentation, embellishment, adornment and surface design/manipulation techniques.

Funding

Department of Culture and the Arts (Western Australia)

Collaborators

Guy Ben-Ary

Period of research

August 2010 to July 2011