Exactly just How girls have found empowerment through being online that is sad
This musician is utilizing Instagram and selfies to subvert the objectification of females throughout history – and she actually is calling it Sad Girl Theory
Self-proclaimed queen that is tragic Instagram musician Audrey Wollen stumbled on our attention a year ago, marking out her very own electronic room with Judith Butler/Sailor Moon mash-ups, a twitter account documenting her real problems and recreations of renaissance paintings – certainly one of that has been the target of Richard Prince’s current Instagram pillage. However, if there’s something the LA-based musician has been doing you need to find out about it is Sad woman Theory.
She proposes that – despite things being regarding the up for females these ful times – sometimes being addressed once the reduced intercourse still sucks, so that as a work of political opposition we have to acknowledge that and start to become as goddamn miserable even as we want. “The color of feminism that’s chosen for news attention is almost always the main one many palatable towards the powers that be – unthreatening, good, public,” explains Wollen. “I felt sort of alienated by modern feminism, since it demanded a great deal of me personally (self-love, great intercourse, financial success) that i simply couldn’t provide.” Taking cues from her familiarity with art concept, Wollen’s work is designed to reframe the sadness of females throughout history being method of fighting straight right back. Below, we got the 101 on Sad woman Theory alongside her throughts on Virginia Woolf, Brittany Murphy and objectification that is reclaiming the medium of selfies.
exactly exactly How could you explain asian women with just just what Sad Girl Theory is?
Audrey Wollen: Sad Girl Theory proposes that the sadness of girls is recognised as a work of opposition. Governmental protest is generally defined in masculine terms – as something outside and frequently violent, a demonstration within the roads, a riot, a career of area. But i believe that this spectrum that is limited of excludes an entire reputation for girls that have utilized their sorrow and their self-destruction to disrupt systems of domination. Girls’ sadness just isn’t passive, self-involved or superficial; it’s a gesture of liberation, it really is articulate and informed, it really is a real way of reclaiming agency over our anatomical bodies, identities, and life.
Who’re your favourite sad girls?
Audrey Wollen: Sad woman Theory comes into the world out from the cult of tragic queens which have constantly fascinated girls that are young individuals like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Frida Kahlo, or Virginia Woolf. My favourites alter all the time, but at this time I’m actually into Brittany Murphy, Hannah Wilke, Elena Ferrante, Clarice Lispector, and Persephone, queen associated with underworld.
Exactly why is Sad Girl Theory right that is necessary, and exactly why should all of us be unfortunate girls?
Audrey Wollen: i do believe Sad woman Theory possesses resonance now because feminism has made such a“comeback that is big within the news recently. Personally I think like girls are increasingly being put up: we are failing at our own empowerment, when the voices that are demanding that joy are the same ones participating in our subordination if we don’t feel overjoyed about being a girl. Worldwide misogyny is not the consequence of girls’ lack of self-care or self-confidence. Sad Girl Theory is just an authorization slide: feminism does need to advocate n’t for just just exactly how awesome and enjoyable being a woman is. Feminism has to acknowledge that being a woman on the planet at this time is among the hardest things there is – it’s unimaginably painful – and which our discomfort does not have to be discarded into the title of empowerment. It can be utilized as a product, a fat, a wedge, to jam that equipment and alter those habits.
“Girls’ sadness just isn’t passive, self-involved or superficial; it really is a motion of liberation, it really is articulate and informed, it really is a means of reclaiming agency over our anatomical bodies, identities, and lives” – Audrey Wollen
Ended up being here a moment that is specific had been answering? Personally I think just like it will be appropriate at any true point in history.
Audrey Wollen: Completely! Before history, even! The patriarchy could be the earliest system of energy there is certainly. Sadness, rips, even self-harm have already been considered apparent symptoms of femininity for years and years. An indicator, of course – never an autonomous act. It is so worthwhile to dig deep into history in order to find artefacts of women’s gestures that are liberatory have been cornered away as “madness.” It’s comforting to understand that people had been never ever maybe perhaps not fighting.
How are self-identified Sad Girls relating to – or subverting – the cliche of females as poor and sensitive and painful?
Audrey Wollen: i do believe that those cliches of this poor, delicate women can be simply here to psych us down, if you act “strong,” you’re a bitch; if you act emotional you’re weak and pathetic because we get stuck in a catch 22. When you’ve accepted you do, because those cliches are designed to swallow our entire existence, you can do what you actually feel like that you are going to be affirming a sexist cliche no matter what. It is dangerous to own your radical politics caught in a period of effect – trying to “disprove” the patriarchy, as though the patriarchy actually has some logic or proof behind it.
just exactly What projects that are current you focusing on?
Audrey Wollen: I’m wanting to write guide, that will be the culmination of Sad woman Theory, or at the least the materialisation of it. I’m additionally investigating and dealing on a brand new human anatomy of artwork concerning the very early hysteria clients of Los Angeles Salpetriere, the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, the erotics for the medical center, and my resemblance to 1990s Nicole Kidman.
Just just just What inspired your variety of repetition photographs?
Audrey Wollen: It began by having a love that is purely aesthetic traditional paintings that finished up spiralling as a semi-erotic need to destroy them, sublimate them. By re-performing those pictures, i needed to put myself included in a lineage – a brief history of anonymous, nude girls. Part of that is an aspire to re-claim the image, to go on it right back through the male hand, but we additionally accept we are all followed, haunted, by these representations of girls that I am unable to escape the original. They set a typical for femininity that many girls mimic unconsciously every that control our understanding of what is beautiful, what is sexy, what is powerful day.
Therefore, there’s the pleasure of disruption (of stealing, of smearing) but additionally of recognition and dream: i do want to function as woman into the artwork, I’ve always desired to function as woman when you look at the painting. By placing my own body to the image, i really could jiggle it out of the extremely strict confines of history, allow it to inhale just a little, and also glance at the thing that was taking place here, just just exactly what those figures had been coping with, what ideals they certainly were promising. That provided me with a method to contemplate every types of image, not merely traditional paintings but conceptual art of this 1960s, fashion photographs, anime TV programs, etc.
They kinda remind me of exactly exactly exactly what the creative art critic John Berger stated about representations of females in art – just exactly exactly how they’re always looked over or put to work. So how exactly does your work react to that?
Audrey Wollen: Yes, exactly! Berger is actually saying females don’t come in art as topics, just objects I don’t think we really grasp the implications of that kind of representation– we talk a lot about the objectification of women in the media or in artwork, but. While you are an item, you might be incompetent at your personal actions, and you are clearly at risk of anyone’s actions upon you. You might be a hollow receptacle for other people’s desires and motions. The artwork is a scene of genuine horror and physical violence, even though its simply an excellent image of a pretty woman lying on a sleep.
Exactly what do 21st Century Instagram girls study on art history?
Audrey Wollen: i believe the Instagram woman is element of art history; she’s submerged in it. The selfie is somewhat various it still serves a similar function because it is mediated by tech and the internet rather than a man with a paintbrush, but. I’m actually enthusiastic about exactly exactly how porn, artwork, and technology have blended together to produce a generation that is whole of whom endlessly repeat their very own image. I do believe it: the objectification of girls can be re-staged and read differently that we can use the products of the patriarchy as tools to dismantle. Therefore let’s flip it around: imagine if the nude girl that is horizontaln’t a symbol of subordination, however a sign of rebellion? How about the type of things may be used to our benefit? In anime, there are a great number of figures who’re half robot, half woman, that are totally infantile and eroticised but still totally lethal. Exactly what can we study from her utilization of object-ness?