Bodyism - Emily's Portfolio

Emily Withers

Bodyism

2020-2021

Acrylic paint, multi-media paper, graph paper, newsprint, cartridge paper, watercolour, colouring pencils, pen, sharpie, packing tape, photographs, digital collages, lipstick, glitter, garbage, and human remains.

55.2” x 48.2” (grid), 9” x 12” (individually)

Body Techniques

The Seen Body

The Unseen Body

Interns on Externs - Body on Nature

Externs on Interns - Nature on Body

The Quantified Body

Disembodied Anatomy

The Body with Artifacts

Substances created by but separate from the body

Enhanced Biological Functions

The Unconscious Body

Proximity Comfortability

Excerpt from Bodyism Book In-Progress:

Autobiographical Words and Images

Your body is material comprised of 59 atomic elements, but your body is more than material. You can look down at your body holding this book and see skin, wrinkles, freckles, colour, but you are more than your body, you are embodied. Embodiment is the process in which social meaning is taken into or upon the physical body. Experiences of embodiment are layered, nuanced, and multifaceted which results in the segmenting of bodies into attributes that are gendered, racialized, disabled, aged, and more. These attributes are social constructions, for example gender is a social construction based on a person’s genitals. We might all just be social constructions.

Your body is how you act both in and on the world, and is the medium through which you experience everything around you and through which everything around you acts towards you in return. This book would look very different for any person within it, as no one has experienced the same existence. The kind of body you have has an incredible impact on how you can act, and how you are acted upon. Your body completely effects your subjectivity. Your subjectivity describes your experience as a conscious being who is self aware and who is able to recognize your ability to act upon objects in the world. This self awareness or subjectivity arises from our interactions with both other conscious beings and the objects in our environment. Everyone has their own way of being. Individuals perceive the social world around them and react to it in their own unique way. Society, group culture, and personal history shape the body and the mind and as a result, shapes the present social actions of an individual. We respond differently to the worlds we live in, and we have perceived worlds often structured around the cultures we live in. We all learn the rules of the game, in different contexts.

Within sociology, it is generally accepted that the body is central to the picture we have of ourselves, and the body is affected by the society around us. If our existence so greatly relies on the existence of others around us, then aren’t we all just social constructions? If you don’t exist for other people, then who are you alone? Are you anybody? The society around us fundamentally makes us who we are. Perhaps there’s nothing to us as individuals. But in the end of things, are we not just a body? A Body with a mind? A body that exists, albeit temporarily.