CAIR CRAWFORD
Vessels 2007
Shroud 84"x60" oil/canvas
Painting, when it questions the total complex of relations between people and things, is something other than ornamental. The Vessel series looks at the role assigned to feminine nature by the ancient Greeks and posits it next to a legacy of contemporary codes of consumption.
Plato’s Chora is described in his discourse on creation as the space between Being and Becoming (Timaeus). Chora is the middle ground, the unordered and erratic chaos that is entered into by the intellect to bring something about. According to interpretations of Platonic thought, this quality cannot be perceived by the senses but is the source of all symbolic manifestations of reality. (French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva has appropriated Chora and renamed it the “psychoanalytic chora” to describe the pre-verbal experience between mothers and infants that prepares a child for entry into the symbolic order). This relational quality, which informs meaningful exchange, is diminished when dominated by technological codification.
Like the psychoanalytic chora, paintings communicate within the realm of the non-verbal. They speak as visual approximations of cultural and social dynamics. The painted Vessels are depicted as anthropomorphic shapes to resemble headless, impregnated female bodies. Like amphorae or anaphora, the images hold, maintain and preserve things that are carried forth again and again and serve as a mnemonic device for the retrieval of information. Barcodes, fretwork and filigree restrain the expansive, decorative artifacts and establish a framework and lexicon for determining market value. Intertwining the geometry of commerce with a monumental symbol of a female divinity exemplifies how functional and celebratory objects can become racist and sexist caricatures of feminine nature.
© Cair Crawford, All rights reserved
