Nevan’s Work

FOOD ART

What I’m Saying:

I used to hate eating, It made me sad, Because I felt like it would lead to me looking the way I dreaded looking. I am mad at how much time I have been concerned about things that do not matter, Hanging on to mean things people have said, Calling me a slut, a whore, ugly, And I actually let myself be upset by it, And wasted my time being upset about it, Upset that people found me ugly. I am mad that female beauty standards are rooted in pedophilia, At one point in my life i wouldn’t let myself eat because I wanted to look like that, All of the time I have wasted removing my body hair, Making myself look younger than I am, Like I looked like when I was a child, To be beautiful the way I’m told I should be,I am mad at how much energy being afraid of people who didn’t like me, People who thought I’d somehow done something to wrong them, Kissed their ex boyfriend, Didn’t give them enough attention, Lied to them, And when I wonder why I did these things, It was to make other people like me, The endless journey to be perfect. I’m mad about all the times someone has made me not be myself, My parents telling me i couldn’t wear something, Dye my hair a colour, I can’t pierce my nose if I want to work there, People judge me by how I would look on the outside, Don’t get tattoos that you can’t hide, What is the point of being yourself, Being authentic, if you have to hide that to be professional, That my clothing can tell more things about myself than my mouth can, Can looking like I want to because I want to look like an art piece Will take away from me ever being taken seriously, From everyone thinking I am beautiful. I am mad that I have to pay to be alive, That I have to work tirelessly only to give it all to someone Who was fortunate enough to have the money to own a house, And make me live there And to pay to get an education, To have a good job, To make enough money, To one day live in a place that belongs to me, We all go through the motions, And in the end, We all get to the same place, We die. And then what? I imagine as I am dying I will feel regret for trying too hard to please other people, I will regret wasting the energy and wasting the time, And mostly I will regret all the food I didn’t eat, And all the things I never tried, And it is because I want to be beautiful to people who see me, And that it’s never really mattered if I’ve felt beautiful to myself, As I am dying I will regret the food I never ate, Because then I will be dead, And that will be the end. 

This performance was very much inspired by Marina Abramovic, specifically her work ‘Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful’, as well as her work ‘The Onion’. I chose to eat fruit in my video because there is a cliche eroticism of women eating fruit, however, I did it in a way there is very messy and off putting, while talking about how much validation I feel I need from other people. In Abromavic’s piece ‘The Onion’, she i eating an onion by biting it like an apple, and complaining, while crying. My dialogue was heavily influenced by the voice over in ‘The Onion’, instead of complaining about things, I decided to talk about how frustrated I am with myself.

FOOD ASSIGNMENT NOTES

• video 
• me eating really colourful food with my hands  
• similar to cherry video 
• talking with my mouth full
• complaining  
  • Complaining about people who were mean to me 
  • Complaining about how I am 20 and just found out I have ADHD 
  • Talking back to all of the mean things people have said to me
  • Ask if I can record a therapy session and then use its dialogue 
  • making people uncomfortable by my words but laugh by my demeanour 
  • Nihilistic but not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense that nothing matters except for how I feel about myself 
• orange slices 
• juice in wine glass
• grapes 
• cherries
• pomegranate 
• apple
• fruit spread 
• play on eroticism of women eating fruits

PODCAST REFLECTION – THE RISE AND FALL OF BREAD

Unlike many people currently, the act of baking bread holds a very special place in my heart. Not because it is a comfort food, or because one of the most intense pleasures to exist is cracking open a fresh loaf right after removing it from the oven, but because baking bread has actually connected me with the most important people in my life.

Before I was born, my grandmother, my dads mother, had a brain aneurysm and was left in a wheel chair, with very poor memory, and very little of who she was left of her. As I grew up, I always heard from my relatives, that I reminded them of her. She was an incredibly strong woman, she had four kids, not very much money, a farm, 18 siblings, and was an artist. To this day, I wish I could’ve met her when she was still herself, I have so many things I wish I could ask her. When I was young, my family and I would visit Tignish, PEI, the town where she grew up. Her sister Lois, my great aunt, taught me how to bake my first loaf of bread, and biscuits, and pastry. I realized it was so much more than just baking bread, because these recipes that Lois had, the ones that were her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s, were so important to her, that the act of teaching me to make them with her, was somewhat of the ultimate form of her expressing her love for me. I have carried this with me for my entire life, and it has lead me so many places I probably would not have gotten to if it weren’t for bread.

In my second year of university, I was at a bar, and talking to this girl, who I would later call my best friend, about how I bake bread. She asked me if I wanted to come over later that week, and teach her. I obviously said yes. When I got there, there were way more people than I thought there would be, all anticipating a three course meal of various breads I had planned to make. First course: plain white bread, crust softened with olive oil, baked in a cast iron pan, paired with a dip of olive oil, black currant jam, and balsamic vinegar. Second course: white bread filled with pieces of red onion, and olive, paired with hummus, and cream cheese. Third course: cinnamon and brown sugar bread, with peanut butter and banana, or honey one top. I taught everyone how to bake them, and everyone loved the outcome so much. This would later be a monthly reoccurrence we called ‘Bread Night’, and this moment, is when I began to construct many of my most valuable relationships. I rode my bike home, and thought about how I had done exactly what Lois had done for me all those years ago.

Growing up, my dad never let us buy bread. He would always make it. Which I never understood why people just didn’t always do. It tastes so much better when it is home made and fresh. Free of preservatives, and catered to exactly what you expect out of your perfect loaf of bread. I think that many people are baking bread during the pandemic, because they have been given more time, to figure out how to enjoy life. Prior to this, many people would have believed they did not have enough time in the day to bake bread, so instead they would buy it, and make quick meals out of a pre-sliced loaf of bread. Most likely not thinking about the things that would change if they took the time to bake instead. Or maybe they believed they didn’t have time to learn, or that it would be too hard. then, everyone is stuck at home for weeks, being encouraged to not do anything, and are suddenly gifted with many more hours of the day, so they bake bread, and they realize it isn’t just a loaf of bread. It is love, and pleasure, and enjoyment, and happiness, and delicious, and put together and baked, and then consumed. And without knowing, they bring these things into their lives, and think it’s just a hobby to bake my own bread, but really, unknowingly, it is so much more than that.

In the very beginning of the podcast, they explore the roots of the word companion, and how it relates back to the breaking of bread with your companions. My entire view of the importance of bread in my life is based on this, and having no idea that this was the root of the word, it was very striking to me, and could not be more true.

ZOOM ART

VIDEO NOTES

For each of the videos we were instructed to watch, they seem to have a similar levels of choreography, in the sense where the performer seems to have been given conceptual instruction, but not so much to the extent where what they are doing seems like an action that is orchestrated by someone else. Additionally, the videos containing more than one person doing the action, such as ‘Suck Teeth Compositions’, the performers preform individually, yet their actions contrast the other performers actions harmoniously, but still seem very natural to each person. This makes the video very easy to watch, and get lost in, because the flow of it grabs, and holds on the to attention of the viewers so effectively.

ZOOM ART PROPOSAL

When thinking about what I miss the most about my friends, it isn’t so much that I miss talking to them, but I miss just being in their presence and having their energy around me. My idea for the zoom art is to just coexist with someone I really miss, and haven’t seen in a very long time, because of the pandemic, the concept is to try to transfer friendly energy and friendly presence over zoom in a way that feels almost like they are here with me, and being alone physically, not so lonely. Similar to Factum Tremblay, shown in class, the idea is to have two people, connected over the internet, who also have a strong bond in real life. Unlike Factum Tremblay, the communication isn’t verbal, but instead, it is through someone’s energy, and just feeling close to that person, even though you are far away.

SOCIAL DISTANCING SELF PORTRAIT

Nevan

—

“The pandemic has been really awful for my brain. As someone who struggles with my mental health regularly, having to stay indoors, and not see people has been a very intense struggle for me. The amount of people I have seen since this all started, I can count on one hand. As someone who uses going out as a coping mechanism, the results of having to stay inside, and in my own space, in my own head, have been less than good.”

—

For this assignment, I decided to take a Social Distance Self Portrait. I chose to be very honest with how it is going for me. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have watched my mental health decline. More than I would like to admit, I am like this for the majority of the day. I find it very empowering to create art about my mental state and be very honest about it, because it makes something I despise and find exhausting about myself, into something I can appreciate.

NOTES WEEK 5:

• Most videos go along with a blurb that seems somewhat optimistic about the pandemic
• Still person, background movies – maybe have TV in back?
• Neutral music or background noise
• Self portrait?

BANNER

Minimalism: The first banner I made reads ‘MINIMALISM’ in very small, simple letting and is displayed on a large empty wall on its own.

Disturbance: The second banner reads ‘DISTURBANCE’. It is hung in two places, and the end is strung but not hung. This implies that the banner has been disturbed, and is no longer hung in three places, as initially implied.

NOTES WEEK 3:

Possible banners:

• boring art

• minimalism- really small, on big empty wall

• letters

• passage of time- like a birthday banner

• like a birthday banner 

• taken for granted 

• settler colonial violence 

• dematerialization – gradually becomes harder to see 

• not here

• create a space 

• discrete colours

• anxieties about death-rainbow coloured like happy birthday, a star at the beginning and end

• dont be shy

• black and white-black side white, white side black

• moral obstacles 

• disturbance -half hanging, half falling, black 

• flowery

NOTES WEEK 3

Word art displayed on billboards in public is such an interesting, and effective way to make simple words have such a big meaning, and having it displayed so large really just throws all the meaning and thoughts behind it right into the faces of the public. Expanding on this, the public display of such an artwork, reaches a much more broad audience, because it includes a large amount of people who may not wander into a an art gallery, or come into contact with much art in their daily lives. One of my favourite pieces we explored was ‘The Last Billboard’. I found this to be one of the most intriguing pieces, because of its power, as well as its simplicity. I think this method of displaying art does exactly what it is supposed to, and really gets the message through to people, who may be ignorant to exploring the deeper meaning of other installations.

BOOK STACKS

Katchadorian specifically with their work on the series ‘Sorted Books’, gives new perspective and meaning to books, without any kind of description with the content inside them. Additionally, the series tells a story with multiple books, making the viewer almost no longer consider their individual contents anymore. Dymants work with his piece ‘One Billion Years’ used a similar approach, where the meaning of the work was not found in each individual book, but in the collection as a whole. Although the concept of both these works is very similar, as well as the execution being very similar, they give off completely different conclusions to each piece. Katchadorian uses the titles to write very short, poetic stories, that are worded in a somewhat choppy way, but still make sense, and flow nicely. Whereas Dymants tells a continuous, less poetic story over the past as well as the future, using book titles which are seemingly unrelated, but somehow connected and relevant, and keep track of time.

I took an approach similar to that of Katchadorian’s book stacks, making the title of the books create somewhat of a narrative between the books. To create this, I took all of the books I could find in my house and laid them out on the floor so I could see all of the titles. My library consisted of books I have used for classes over the past three years, as well as books I moved out of my childhood home with because I have an emotional connection to them, as well as books that I use for personal reference.

NOTES WEEK 2

Books Stacks:

• Poetic stack – have a common theme
• Story telling stack
• Stacked to read level – not lines up along the side
• stacked vertically