Updated Obscurant statement

Presenting the illusion of full-sized melting wooden lampposts, 'Obscurant' begins to challenge the dominant phallogocentric nature of thought and practice. Symbolising the phallic One, each lamppost presents a functioning light that could represent the dominant masculine tendencies (such as rationality, mastery, reason, and representation (enlightenment)), which suppresses and subordinates feminine tendencies. However, it is in the encounter of the lampposts' melting drips that represent my proposal of using creative resistance to the traditional dominant phallogocentric nature of thought and practice. The title 'Obscurant' is deliberately chosen due to its definition meaning a person who strives to prevent the facts or full details of something from becoming known: therefore, as art can articulate what is unknown, unthought and unsymbolised, I propose that it is through creativity that we attempt to find the feminine ways and means of expression. As Bracha Litchenberg Ettinger (2004) so neatly puts it, 'the archaic becoming-mother must melt into obscurity and senselessness as a Thing of no human significance', this sculpture presents a critique and challenge to this subordination of female expression, pleasure and imagination.

*This blog post has been back-dated for continuity purposes. Statement was originally created on 21st January 2014 and further edited on 18th January 2016.