Artist: Susan R. Manspeizer
Museum: ArtsWestchester (White Plains, United States)
Technique: Sculpture
From the artist: Using the symbolic imagery of bras, I explore how the qualities I relate to, as a mature woman artist, have been shaped by global power dynamics during the last half-century. These qualities include being nurturing, compassionate, intuitive, productive and creative.As an 81-year-old artist, mother and grandmother, I have spent my career channeling, translating and expressing my feminine experience into an art practice. My two primary passions have been nurturing and caring for my husband and four daughters, and expressing my sculptural concerns through a female lens. My sculptures are made of wood - a hard, living material - which I soften and bend into supple, organic shapes. The resulting works reference the female body, and the ways in which it fosters protection and growth.Bras have an intimate relationship to female breasts, which themselves occupy many roles:source of nutrition, erotic zone, signifier of womanhood, and so on. Breasts are biological, butsociety expresses the expectations of womanhood through the function, appearance, and material of bras. They act as supportive garments, titillating lingerie, utilitarian objects and even armature. Drawing from my own lived experience, this work centers around the shifts in feminine identity in response to decades of socio-political pressure
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