A miracle solution to this shit

I have spent a lot of time thinking about my reasoning and intentions behind the boob prints. I followed down a path of climate change because I was inspired by the Salford dataset live brief project in the beginning of the year. When this project got cancelled because of COVID-19 I realised that I had pushed my project in the direction of climate change protest when my project at the core is expressing my newfound freedom. Being in lockdown for over seven months now has had a huge impact on my mental health and I really struggled with dissociation and feeling like nothing is real. I first noticed with my idea for the Polaroid photos that I liked Polaroid photo as a medium with which to express my art because it was a way of grasping on to reality. In a sense a photo brings you into a moment that happened, and I have always used photos as a way to ground myself as if holding on to a physical printed out photo was a way of grasping on to life. I am currently in a relationship that got put into a pressure cooker when lockdown began and I have struggled to maintain a sense of individual identity while living with my partner in a shared house. By establishing firmer boundaries I have regained a sense of freedom to do whatever I please and my mental health has been on an upwards journey ever since.

This project is a personal voyage of discovery by me for me. I am using the same energy that goes into a protest and channelling it into self-healing and self-care during these trying times. I have a lot of insecurity towards my projected confidence and I struggle to express confidence in myself and believe the words. I really like my boobs, and this is a very new feeling for me compared to my teenage years when I first developed breasts. I always hated them because I felt they were too small for my overall frame. As I have grown up and beauty trends have changed and developed and yo-yoed in terms of what beauty is, I found a sense of body acceptance and I have grown to love my boobs for what they are. Breasts as a base are fat sacks that are used to nourish infants in the early years of one’s life. Over the years they have been sexualised and censored and their power has been taken from women by means of men in power governing and dictating what women should do with their bodies. The angrier I get at how women are treated the more I love my body and the more I appreciate and see beauty in it. I want to embrace my confidence in my body and what it can do. I’ve never vocalised confidence that I truly believed in from fear of someone else tearing me down, but I am done being scared and I am bored of worrying about what everybody else thinks of me. This body is mine and I will do with it what I want because it can do some incredible things.

Making these prints reminds me that I exist and need to keep going because my presence is valuable on this planet. Being someone that lives in my own head a lot of the time means my relationship with my body is very disconnected and I forget to look after it often. My desire for nudity I believe comes as a rebellion against the conformity of my upbringing. I was constantly slut shamed by my mother for having any skin showing or wearing makeup and was taught from an early age that I should dress modestly to avoid rape. Unfortunately, women will forever be held to ridiculous standards forged by men and I can only hope to be part of the change already happening towards equality. Being an only child has also left me very independent as I was often left alone as a child and these prints act as form of company in the form of the presence of a body during a lockdown where I cannot see my friends as I normally would.

These prints are me. They are my protest. They are my colours. I am immortalising myself while my body is in its prime and I will use vibrant colours as a way around the censorship that exists on women’s bodies. I will make my colours louder and brighter to draw attention to the nudity so that everyone can see my message.

This is an exploration and a celebration of the female form in times of censorship and lockdown: in a time where everything sucks and the world has come to a halt, I am in search of a miracle solution to this shit.