Untitled (Self-Portrait of Prudence)

Untitled (Self-Portrait of Prudence)

88x60 cm

felt, glass beads, sequins

Photograph: Stefan Bagnoli

I was invited to do a self-portrait to accompany my work in a collection of Women Artists. It is an interesting collection, made intimate and generous by this practice of inviting the female artists whom they have collected to consider making a self-portrait to sit alongside their works. In itself this practice not only highlights the sensitivity and sensibility of the curatorial consideration it furthermore establishes what I consider a specific identity for the collection; a doubled space of representation in which the body of the artist exists. Because of this thoughtfulness I found the idea of specifically entering into a self-portrait doubly daunting!







Whilst I often make work that stems from my experience, or uses my own body as reference or starting point, to consciously attempt the depiction of myself was, I realised, a totally different attitude. The commission was generously open to any style, form or materials I should wish to use, and whilst so open it also then implied, for me in making the work, to be even more set to the time I would make it in. (The specific thoughts, materials and ways I was currently working in etc.) And so it seemed it would be more so a time capsule of myself. Though, having reached 30 it did seem a good and sturdy enough age to try and attempt a representation of myself, and perhaps (or at least I say this now) better than if I had made it several years back as to date with the earlier works that sit in the collection! Anyway my doubts and self-indulgent musings aside after nearly a year of sitting on the commission (and having hit hit the other side of 30!) I finally reconciled myself to an idea of self-representation:

The Prudence of the title is an allegorical reference, but also signals towards a personal 'iconography'. Classically, and later in Christian doctrine as one of the Four Cardinal Virtues, the personification of Prudence is commonly depicted with a snake entwined about her and mirror. The snake is representative of caution – the sense that prudence requires careful thought over hasty decision making. Additionally, the mirror, or the act of looking into a mirror is representative of self-knowledge. Illustrating the Latin maxim Nosce te ipsum (know yourself) and heavily connected with truth and wisdom. I thought these were interesting explanations for the process and challenge of making a self-portrait, but furthermore the signs that are used to represent Prudence were particularly interesting for me:

I am born under the Chinese zodiac sign of the Snake. These odd cultural tokens of our childhood carry a strange resonance so I am quite connected to this idea both in good-humour and earnest! It has made me interested in a common link between women and snakes in mythology and folklore and I often return to explorations of these themes that abound in the cultural imaginary - either of women with snakes: such as Prudence or Athena the Warrior Goddess. Or 'snake-women': like the Medusa or Melusine from French folklore. In 2002 I did a little quartet of paper-cuts collectively titled Snake-Women, and earlier in 2001 I explored the popular Chinese classic: Lady White Snake in an extended series of cut-outs. So the snake here is both symbol of caution and a sign I readily identify with.

The mirror and its depiction in a silhouette, and or a shadow of myself, conjoins two central tenets of Western art and philosophy: the mirror and the shadow. The mirror is seen as representative of the self, and the shadow of the Other. This split has foregrounded the West's intellectual cannons from the Classical period to the present day. Contemporary cultural studies still utilize this split in a similar manner, but there have been challenges to it with the thrust of post-colonial thinking, and specifically hybridity theory as encapsulated in Bhabha's third space. My total investment with the Shadow metaphor and my continual utilisation of it, is to try and effect a turn-around of this split. With the diverse language of post-modern studies, the main investigation of my work is to attempt to liberate the shadow motif from the more negative connotations attached to it. So in this piece which is a self-portrait I have played on these two central themes – (the symbol and the metaphor) that are in operation in my practice, and united mirror and shadow: Self and Other as one.