Same same but different: A creative investigation through ceramics and glass into women with neurodiversity who experience distorted body awareness/pe
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sunderland
Department Name: Sch of Arts and Design
Abstract
The proposal is following on from my BA Ceramics in 1990 in which I investigated eating disorders and body image: Dissertation titled 'Images of weight' and my MA research into the relationship to self, body, environment: Title 'Humanity is experiencing a breakdown and loss of self: Does the creative process and especially clay, play an integral part in the reintegration and reparation of the self, other, world? This was born from my own lived experience and over 20 years working in the art and ceramics department of a Specialist college for young people with complex needs and an interest in phenomenology.
This research aims to fill to a gap in the field with regards to arts practice and neurodiversity in women. In my research I would use my own lived experience and also engage case studies with neurodivergent women artists (in person or zoom) through the medium of clay to explore their association and relationship with their own body and agency, to identify whether the haptic creative process with clay can alleviate this unease and develop a more embodied experience. Ultimately I would develop a body of artwork based on the outcomes from this research, with the hope of answering why neurodivergent women fall under the radar of diagnosis? What leads them to experience distorted self/body awareness, disordered eating and hoarding? As part of the contextual review I would investigate relevant Museum collections and archives including The Wellcome Collection to establish if theses issue have been documented by artists in the past.
I believe that early Upper Paleolithic figurative artefacts were created by women looking down at their own bodies in self realisation and exploring the idea of self and other; as embodiments of experience as described by Women of the world at the British museum women of the world blog https://blog.britishmuseum.org/women-of-the-world/
Often the work of female artists relates to unease, where the body is used as a metaphor and this can be seen in the work of Modern artists Lousie Bourgeois, who described her artistic process as 'Technologies of the self' Micheson. K. (2015) where she was re-creating her-self in tangible form, through domestic materials. Today, many female artists including Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville and Rebecca Warren and glass artist Emma Woffenden create ambiguous figurative work, where hyper focus on body parts rather than wholes are used to emphasize sensation. The "Modernist period and even beyond, the visceral and vulnerable body is now a potent signifier of lived experience as well as a medium of formal aesthetic enquiry"(O'Reilly, 2009; 8] The Body is expressed as an object with agency and as a lived experience. Where there is fragmentation or the Western idea of Cartesian mind and body split there is an obsessive need for objects or feeding to define the self. Freud (1930) described this as 'The prosthetic god'. More recent research into Disordered eating. Springer (2017) Current psychology reports that "there is growing interest in the relationship between anorexia nervosa and autism spectrum disorder" and Political theorist Jane Bennett in Vibrant matter (2010) describes thingness, the agency of things or non human bodies and the special relationship that people with ADHD have with objects that they may have a deeper sensory awareness of the pull of the object or an affinity with the speed or slowness of things (2012) which could be one explanation for hoarding and eating disorders. She describes the agency of things, objects or food calling to the individual. "She understands the hoarder as uniquely able to heed the "call of things" thus eroding the boundaries between him/herself and challenging the entrenched duality between subject and object." Falkoff (2021) In a culture of dualities, us and them and same and difference of hierarchy of objects,discrimination and fear of other, more people are being diagnosed as Neurodiverse although fewer women with ASD
This research aims to fill to a gap in the field with regards to arts practice and neurodiversity in women. In my research I would use my own lived experience and also engage case studies with neurodivergent women artists (in person or zoom) through the medium of clay to explore their association and relationship with their own body and agency, to identify whether the haptic creative process with clay can alleviate this unease and develop a more embodied experience. Ultimately I would develop a body of artwork based on the outcomes from this research, with the hope of answering why neurodivergent women fall under the radar of diagnosis? What leads them to experience distorted self/body awareness, disordered eating and hoarding? As part of the contextual review I would investigate relevant Museum collections and archives including The Wellcome Collection to establish if theses issue have been documented by artists in the past.
I believe that early Upper Paleolithic figurative artefacts were created by women looking down at their own bodies in self realisation and exploring the idea of self and other; as embodiments of experience as described by Women of the world at the British museum women of the world blog https://blog.britishmuseum.org/women-of-the-world/
Often the work of female artists relates to unease, where the body is used as a metaphor and this can be seen in the work of Modern artists Lousie Bourgeois, who described her artistic process as 'Technologies of the self' Micheson. K. (2015) where she was re-creating her-self in tangible form, through domestic materials. Today, many female artists including Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville and Rebecca Warren and glass artist Emma Woffenden create ambiguous figurative work, where hyper focus on body parts rather than wholes are used to emphasize sensation. The "Modernist period and even beyond, the visceral and vulnerable body is now a potent signifier of lived experience as well as a medium of formal aesthetic enquiry"(O'Reilly, 2009; 8] The Body is expressed as an object with agency and as a lived experience. Where there is fragmentation or the Western idea of Cartesian mind and body split there is an obsessive need for objects or feeding to define the self. Freud (1930) described this as 'The prosthetic god'. More recent research into Disordered eating. Springer (2017) Current psychology reports that "there is growing interest in the relationship between anorexia nervosa and autism spectrum disorder" and Political theorist Jane Bennett in Vibrant matter (2010) describes thingness, the agency of things or non human bodies and the special relationship that people with ADHD have with objects that they may have a deeper sensory awareness of the pull of the object or an affinity with the speed or slowness of things (2012) which could be one explanation for hoarding and eating disorders. She describes the agency of things, objects or food calling to the individual. "She understands the hoarder as uniquely able to heed the "call of things" thus eroding the boundaries between him/herself and challenging the entrenched duality between subject and object." Falkoff (2021) In a culture of dualities, us and them and same and difference of hierarchy of objects,discrimination and fear of other, more people are being diagnosed as Neurodiverse although fewer women with ASD
People |
ORCID iD |
| Andrew Livingstone (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Sam Lucas (Student) |