Mine Not Yours

My breasts have changed over time along with my understanding of ownership, boundaries and the complexity of sexism.

Mine Not Yours is a Parafeminist work that reclaims my ownership over my body, with focus on my breasts. I have employed parody and craft as 'low art' to depict personal experiential narratives of my historical relationship to my breasts from pert adolescence through time and age. My breasts are mine! They do not belong to the objectifying lingering male gaze, the comparison of other women, the child I breast fed, or the sexual partners I have had.

I am questioning through my work my own complicit acceptance of my ‘sins’ as insinuated by the patriarchal lens. The ‘personal as political’ emphasis of Second Wave Feminism offered the female artist the opportunity to confess her individual, often abject bodily experience.

Feminist artists have used their practice “to bypass the person in power to create an outpouring of personal truth leading to catharsis.” Confessional artists have revealed controversial experiences, probing into phallogocentric cultural beliefs, challenging traditional definitions of woman’s place in society.

This legacy has laid the ground for me to confront my supposed immorality, my judgements of myself as ‘sinner,’ encouraging me to explore the abject self through my visual art practice.