Isabel Lima is an artist

My new website

www.isabellima.com

Women International Day- A thought

Today being the women international day, makes me ponder about my role as a woman, and artist, and mum; I must tell you that the future doesn’t look bright from where I’m standing.

Considering that I am graduating this year BA Fine Art, I am finding very difficult to have a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to professional options.

My dream work would be undertaking artistic residencies around the world, engaging with different people and spaces, but unfortunately that isn’t possible. Being a single mum, and living in an adopted country means that I don’t have the structure of family to support me( they all live abroad); and I need to be that structure for my own son.

I am approaching the end of my degree with a lot of fear and questions, and although I reckon everyone goes through this I feel very lonely in this quest.

I intend to move to another city to start a new adventure, and see how my career evolves, but how am I suppose to do that if I need to pay for rent, put food on the table, work a random full-time job and at the same time develop my own practice and spare some time to actually spend it with my child?

I love Art, I truly do, but sometimes it seems that I pay too high of a price for it.

I’ve just spent three years of my life working really hard,(not to mention the financial investment) to finish this degree, and now what? Are we supposed to drift until someone grabs us?

It is disheartening to think that after all this what is waiting in line for most of us is a job at Tesco.

One thing I know for certain, if jobs or educational opportunities were given on the basis of true hard work, commitment, passion and professionalism I would be overwhelmed with invites by now…

My current practice focuses on inter-human relations, through participatory and collaborative works. It investigates elements of Identity, Self and Other.

According to Richard Jenkins (1996), identity is about meaning and this is always a matter of convention and innovation: always to some extent shared, always to some extent negotiable.

My work investigates this negotiation, this sharing with the other, and it could be best described as a continual process in which the true object of art lies in the interaction with people and in the resulting experience. It is through a relationship with another being that I can better affirm my own identity.

Reflecting upon my work is leading me towards a more phenomenological approach to the issues of Identity and Self. I am moving on to explore the  relationships within the art world and its institutions.

Following the idea that our identities are a construct in  a way similar to the interlocking of jigsaw pieces, Confidential attempts two different approaches in determining an Identity.

It explores a bureaucratic  dimension through data records and a personal dimension through an interview with the participants, who are members of the artistic community; artists, theorists, curators, tutors, etc.

By recording their identity in this manner, especially through the interviews, I will have access to their Self and their life experiences.

My aim is to investigate amongst other things; what is an art professional, what roles do they play at contemporary times, and what is the process of becoming one.

This project is better defined as an experience where an exchange of information takes place. Through this exchange, this encounter, both the participant and I will be reformulating our identities; even if this isn’t a conscious process.

Foucault argues that knowledge is a power over others, the power to define others. In our society this power is imposed not by the personal presence or force, but by the employment of the Superpanopticon, a system of surveillance without windows, towers or guards, which is interiorized to the point that each person is their own overseer; and where with today’s ‘circuits of communication’ and the databases they generate, the individual becomes a case through a meticulously kept file that reflects his/her history.

Nominal freedom of action is cancelled by the look of the other.