body landscapes

Creative ideas come to me in flashes, in visions, and from dreams. A little over a month ago, I had a dream of five bodies in a white vacuous strip of light. Each body morphed between two positions. Tiny movements with trails; a head, a hand, a foot. The bodies were mine. And it felt good to gaze at them. It felt as though I was at my own exhibition.

Shortly thereafter I received notification that I was curated by Carla Gannis for the Loop Art Critique and Exhibition which spans a month with eight critique sessions culminating in a show exhibited in the Loop meta verse. The perfect opportunity to develop the image from my dream, body landscapes.

The work begins with my body. As a dancer, my body acts as conduit, for message. It writes, it gestures, it speaks. Beyond language, dance communicates. My body has things to say, through shapes and shudders, through bends and folds.

To prepare, I warmed and stretched my body with yoga followed by meditation, to get in touch with my internal state. I then pulled out my Lumix GH2 camera and used my favorite lens set up, a c-mount 25mm tv lens. Using a 10 second timer, a mix of NYC sunlight and tungsten light, I began photographing my body in different shapes within a restricted space. The frame was my box, monitor screen as a cage, fit body inside box.

Rule 1 - fit in frame.

Rule 2 - cover face.

It was part of my emotional state to cover my face, to hide that part of me from the self portrait, to be non confrontational when confronting my self. To not see my seer.

Rule 3, relax.

Once I found a shape, I would breathe in and let my body relax, release and drop into the shape. Belly loose, bones connecting into the floor, muscles melting, body released. This is not a pose. This is a shape, a feeling, a state. This is a body landscape.

Crawling back and forth to the camera and back to my spot over 100 times my knees bruised and my body grew tired. I stopped the capture and began the edit with Adobe Photoshop. As photos were selected, backgrounds removed, brightness, levels, curves, and hue adjusted and images resized to 720 for a smaller data footprint, I began to see the dream.

To further visualize I brought the photos into Adobe Premiere to animate them into GIFs. Not getting the result I was after I turned to code. I began by working with five images, trying to make them switch back and forth between each other. Then I found that I could animate them to get the motion blur and emotional state heightened through jiggling the images randomly. I added all 43 selected images to create a full body landscape that moved across the screen from right to left in the sequence the photos were taken.

I then explored randomizing the numbers of bodies, the order of the sequence of bodies and the scale of the bodies. Next I added filters and backgrounds to enhance the colorfield and emotional quality. Once satisfied I tested and discovered a rare occurrence of a black or white box appearing from time to time. To me this represents that box that I was trying to fit into, the restriction of the frame, the screen as a stage. The magic box. Rule #1. It is the rarest version.

Having my picture taken is something I do not enjoy and as someone who is usually behind the camera, it's become important to interrogate myself with my camera through self portraiture. I began in 2017 with my green tara goddess self portrait project using green tara meditations to create eight self portraits for the eight great fears. https://www.cariannshimsham.com/#/self-portrait-project/

A green tara goddess meditation on the carnivorous demons of doubt. Fear of of flesh-eating demons, suffering through doubt. The sixth of the eight great fears.

Usually the form of Green Tara, also known as Tara of the Khadira Forest, is the main deity who is considered to give protection from the eight great fears. But there are also individual forms of Tara for each of the eight fears as well.

The eight fears are considered to have an outer aspect such as lions, elephants, etc. and an inner aspect, the mental defilements they represent. While the outer fears, or dangers, threaten our life or property, the inner ones endanger us spiritually by obstructing or turning us away from the path to enlightenment.

In 2020, I was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 15th, the day the city went on lockdown. Cancer during the pandemic was an extreme layer of emotions and suffering that I am still processing. My body is my instrument, and has gone through a major transition, surgery, radiation, nerve damage, cording, weight gain, pain, range of motion restriction, physical therapy, depression, rehabilitation and recovery.

These portraits for body landscapes is a way of making peace with my body and all that I've been through. Further my shapes seek to capture what we've all been through. The shapes are reflective of the various feelings and emotional states that I've been moving through in these last six weeks.

The need to hold one self, to rest, to curl, to lay, to lean, to fall, to roll, to tuck, to curve, to hug, to relax, to release...

My body is my medium, and the medium, is the message.

Now I await the outputs, to see the landscapes that my body will create, to feel the emotional states that these landscapes will evoke, and to enjoy the peace and release that they bring to who ever may gaze upon them.

*I have left Twitter as it no longer meets my ethical standards. This article is my way of promoting my artwork, so by purchasing you help spread the word without engaging in harmful platforms.

body landscapes is my ETH gen art genesis to celebrate the fx(hash) 2.0 event. 🎉