Bathroom Tales: Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice

Expressions of
Feminity: Domestic
Space, Voice, Carnival
and the Body

Helen Frankenthaler's Resistant Stain

Constant Carnival
Culture

Expressions of Feminity: Domestic Space, Voice, Carnival and the Body

This paper was presented at Voices, Visions and Visionaries Gender Conference, College of Lake County, 2003, Best Faculty Presentation Award, Publication.

© 2002 by Nikki Renee Anderson

I. Introduction

This paper will explore the ideas of my installations, Boss Baby’s Slumber Party and Dressing Room Dramas: Pink and Ruffled and the research that informed them. Both pieces were sculptural installations that explored the nuances of feminine experience based upon my reflections of childhood and adolescence. They incorporate ceramic sculptures that resemble body parts and dress forms designed to act as megaphones. The megaphones play sounds reminiscent of little girls’ voices and nursery rhymes. The girl’s voice is a metaphor for the construction of femininity and identity. All of the megaphone sculptures are placed within the context of private domestic spaces, such as an invented bedroom, because the objects within those settings deepen my investigation into identity.

Boss Baby's Slumber Party, included a giant canopy that covered the entire room, a cradle that balanced high on a column and many ceramic megaphones seated on round pillows. Each ceramic megaphone had a voice that continuously repeated a short phrase or sang part of the nursery rhyme "Rock-a-bye Baby."

Dressing Room Dramas: Pink and Ruffled, was also an installation that incorporated sculptures and sound. The installation referenced a dressing room, incorporating elements of furniture like a vanity dresser and a mirror. Certain ceramic pieces looked like dresses but the sleeves or skirt were transformed into speakers. The sounds were a little girl's voice, a female adult’s voice, and a nursery rhyme.

This paper will explore the theoretical and personal issues that inform my work. It will also reference other artists whose work has influenced mine. It will specifically reference the work of Russian Philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, using his approach to carnival culture. I will address the use of feminine voice in my work and I will look particularly at Dale Spender's article, "Language Studies: From the Spoken to the Written Word." Also, I will examine domestic space which is a constant theme running through each installation.

II. Boss Baby's Slumber Party and Dressing Room Dramas: Pink and Ruffled

Domestic Space

My installations were both representations of domestic space. Boss Baby's Slumber Party portrayed a baby nursery or bedroom space and Dressing Room Dramas: Pink and Ruffled was a fairy tale dressing room. I am interested in the way that private domestic space can function as a metaphor for psychological experiences.

The inspiration for Boss Baby's Slumber Party, began with the nursery rhyme, "Rock-a-bye Baby." I was struck by the unlikely image of a child's cradle being placed high in a treetop. The nursery rhyme is often associated with safety and comfort within a domestic space. There is irony in that message of safety because the nursery rhyme serves as a warning or even a threat to children. For the exhibition, I recreated a baby cradle that was perched on a six and a half foot column to illustrate the warning within "Rock-a-bye Baby." The ceramic megaphone that was in the cradle repeated, "This cradle is in the treetops. I hope I don't take a plop. I don't want to fall. I'm a good baby girl." I was interested in expressing the process of a child falling into the world or a girl becoming a woman.

Also, the baby was the 'boss baby' of the room. Although the cradle was high and the threat of falling was presented, the column seemed very stable. In Beatriz Columina's article, "The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism," she points out that security within the domestic space relates to the placement of the objects within the space and where the inhabitants belong. Columina references Adolf Loos’s discussion of the theater box. Loos said that the theater box is in between claustrophobia and agoraphobia. An occupant of the theater box only feels secure within that very small space because they can look down onto the expansive space of the theater. This space of the theater box could be understood in relationship to domestic space and also power. The baby within the cradle in Boss Baby’s Slumber Party is becomes like the person in Loos's theater box. The cradle could be read as small, claustrophobic and threatening because of its height. Also, though, the baby has the power of the gaze and perspective over the entire room. The baby who is vulnerable and threatened shifts into the powerful role of ‘boss’. A child's experience of falling into the world can be threatening, life changing and powerful.

I wanted to make an invented slumber party because it is often a space where children mature and develop socially. All around the cradle were small, round pillows with ceramic pieces that repeated different phrases. Above the room was a large canopy that was reminiscent of the one I had over my own bed as a child. Much larger in scale, it covered the majority of the space and a created a smaller space within the gallery for viewers to enter.

The psychological impact of the slumber party space functioned on different levels and functioned similarly to domestic space in general. As the viewer entered, the first vision was that of a cute nursery. The canopy and pillows were feminine and soft and all of the furniture was curvy and white. The furniture referenced fantastical dollhouse furniture a little girl’s bedroom. The appearance of the furniture slipped between reality and fantasy and although it was cute, it was also hard and display-like. The cradle and canopy also feel like props that are part of a stage set. As the viewer spent time within the space, it became apparent that each pillow was very isolated. Among all of the sweet images, there is a feeling of separation and distance. Domestic space often contains contradictory elements of comfort, security and isolation. As each ceramic megaphone repeats its phrase, the viewer is pulled in many directions, trying to listen to each one.

In Dressing Room Dramas, I wanted to visually and conceptually expand upon my previous dressing room installation, Your New Princess. Similar to Boss Baby’s Slumber Party, it was also warm and inviting at first glance. A viewer was drawn in to the piece by cheerful colors, a billowing curtain and a fuzzy blue carpet. I chose cheerful qualities as a technique to invite the viewer into the deeper issues within the work. The furniture within the installation included: a vanity dresser, a changing screen, a chaise lounge and a full mirror. There were also ceramic dresses within the space that morphed into megaphones.

I was thinking about the way that I often use dressing up, being cute and feminine as a hiding place. It becomes a way for me to mask emotional and psychological realities. As a little girl, playing dress up in the dressing room taught me how to emphasize and hide my sexuality. Colomina discussed the role of private space, "…on the threshold of the private, the secret, the upper rooms where sexuality is hidden away. At the intersection of the visible and the invisible, women are placed as the guardians of the unspeakable." The dressing room is the private space where sexuality is exposed and also kept secret. The installation incorporated a changing screen and a ceramic dress lay behind it, tossed to the side. The dress represented the emotional experience of wanting to hide behind something, having been forgotten. The dress that lay on the chaise lounge chair had a skirt that opened into a megaphone. Viewers would lean their head into the dress to hear it say, "I hope you can't see my underwear. It's private." This phrase referenced covered and hidden sexuality that exists within the dressing room space and it is representative of fear of exposure. Further, the mirrors were made of painted wood and so there was no reflection. As the viewer or dress seemingly examines herself or himself in the mirror, only a blank surface is returned. Only shadows appeared.

Columina also discusses intruders within domestic space. Domestic space can shift easily between a place of comfort to being intruded upon by an outsider. In my installations, the viewer plays two roles: participant and/or intruder. The viewer is forced to confront the space and respond to the voices within it. Power moves back and forth between the voices and the viewer.

Voice

The voices in my installations are the component that gives the work power. A viewer enters the space and is often compelled to lean close to the work and listen. As the viewer listens to the babies of the slumber party, or the dresses in the dressing room, another type of communication begins to happen. This element takes viewers beyond the visual and into the realm of talking and listening, an even more private world of whispered secrets. Often the negotiation of listening becomes a humorous or uncomfortable form of intimacy. People kneel or sit on the floor to hear the babies. In the dressing room, they would have to position their head in proximity to the bottom of the skirt to hear the sounds.

In the article, "Language Studies: From the Spoken to the Written Word," Dale Spender questions why people often believe that women speak more than men even though it is contrary to empirical reality. Spender notes the linguist Otto Jesperson who believed that women were the empty vessels that made the most sound. The article goes on to prove that women actually speak much less than men in most conversations. The constant repetition of the little girl’s voice in my installations is a response to that reality. I create a structure in which a listener cannot escape the sound of the female voice. I am also dissecting stereotypes about women being empty vessels that speak too much by literally making empty ceramic vessels to project my voices. As a listener leans into to hear the sounds from each vessel there is a shift in power that occurs. The chatter that is coming from each vessel sounds cute and funny at the surface but I hope that listeners use the humor to look at the deeper message of each individual piece.

I began using my voice in installations because I am soft-spoken and I was often told to speak up. I began to think about the stigmas surrounding soft voices and also the power that exists in them. Spender further notes that Jesperson’s opinion was that women were incompetent linguistically and that they were a detriment to language. Spender finds through her research that it has been traditionally valued in western society for women to be quiet or silent. My installations dive into these stereotypes of women’s voices by deliberately giving focus to quiet female voices. The voices initially might draw a viewer to lean closer to listen. It has a sweet and soft sound but it can easily change into an eerie or ominous feeling. The listener is put in the awkward position of choosing which voice to go to first. Suddenly, rather than being ignored, the little voices have great control and power.

Spender also comments on what she terms, ‘women’s encouraging expressions.’ These are expressions that women use to support another person in conversation and draw out their thoughts such as, "Oh really," or, "very interesting." These types of phrases relate to the value of women’s silence because they encourage another’s voice or ideas instead communicating their own. I find that I often use those kinds of phrases myself in conversation because it is considered polite and one of the qualities of being a good listener. The phrases that are repeated within my installations often seem to mimic ‘encouraging expressions’ by at first sounding funny and sweet. They begin to push against that role though, because each ceramic sculpture says its phrase with insistent repetition.

All of the voices and sounds in Boss Baby’s Slumber Party are baby voices, but I tried to use phrases that affect me or are part of my unconscious as an adult. Besides the nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby, the voices in the space dealt with issues of rivalry and friendship. One of the voices said, "As the boss baby of this slumber party, I say that we get rid of all of the cute twin babies." The cute twin babies said, "I love you," "I love you too," "You’re the cutest one," "No you’re the cutest one."

In Dressing Room Dramas, I expanded upon that by including my adult voice among the little girl voices. This installation incorporated the nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet but I transformed it into Little Miss Nikki. One of the dresses spoke in both a child’s voice and an adult’s voice saying, "Little Miss Nikki didn’t feel icky because she had on pink ruffles today." Another adult and child said, "Along came a spider, who sat down beside her and scared Miss Nikki away. Did you know that Miss Nikki is scared of spiders?" These phrases function to both hide and expose my emotional experience. If I am wearing pink ruffles, I must feel happy. Even though I have pink ruffles on, I’m am still vulnerable to the spiders of the world. Wearing pink ruffles and being cute might hide my internal reality, but it doesn’t make me any less real.

Carnival

I often look at play from my childhood to inform my art which is humorous, sad, eerie and telling of who I am as an adult. Bakhtin describes the relationship of art and life in Carnival, "Because of their obvious sensuous character and their strong element of play, carnival images closely resemble certain artistic forms, namely the spectacle…It belongs to the borderline between art and life. In reality, it is life itself, but shaped according to a certain pattern of play."

The major aspects of carnival that I find within my own work include using humor to breakdown hierarchies and question existing stereotypes and the material bodily principle.

Dressing Room Dramas specifically addresses childhood play and the act of dressing up. It is an act that helps children learn what is expected of them as adults as well as being one type of fantasy game that children engage in. Fantasy games allow for children to broaden their experience of the world. They also give children the opportunity to envision a different reality or possible identity. As viewers enter the dressing room, I hope they have some recollection of their own childhood dreams and visions. With both thesis installations, viewers enter and become part of a setting within which they might not typically interact. As they become part of the slumber party or dressing room, they must begin to think about their own relationship to that space. Although they might not ever play dress up, there might be some element of that space that they relate to, find humorous or strange. Suddenly, there is a new connection with the viewer and an opportunity for communication.

Humor is a very important aspect of that communication which is very similar the role of laughter in Carnival. The dress on the chaise lounge entices viewers to put their head into the dress in order to hear the voice tell them not to look at her underwear. This exchange is ridiculous and silly and puts a viewer in an uncomfortable space. If they look further into the interaction, they might think about the physical and even sexual relationship that they have been implicated in with this whimsical dress. Also in Boss Baby's Slumber Party, the 'cute twin babies' constantly tell each other how cute they are and how much they love each other. This interaction was often responded to with laughter by viewers and also speaks of the way that many little girls form connections and friendships.

The Body and Sculptural Forms

I often use the body as a way to express peculiarities, which is related to the material bodily principle in Carnival. The voices are the most prominent example of this principle. The voices in my installations are an obvious connection to the female body but it is always disembodied. The voice expresses aspects of personality, femininity and psychological experience. The ceramic forms in both installations also reference the body in strange ways. The dresses all have parts that morph into megaphones. The megaphones exist where some part of the body usually would be such as a head, arms or legs. The voices and the form reference the body but it is not there. In the slumber party, the ceramic forms begin to feel like strange babies that have no arms and legs and cannot move throughout the space.

The megaphones specifically reference the sexuality of the female body. The megaphones undulate between being toy-like and also vaginal. This reference is strongest in Dressing Room Dramas. Because the megaphones are also dresses, the female body clearly emerges in the forms. The form on the chaise lounge chair brings viewers into to listen to the voice, which is coming from underneath the dress. As a viewer leans in, the power of sexuality is placed within the feminine form. The voices of Dressing Room Dramas were a combination of a little girl's voice and an adult woman's voice. I wanted to make clear that commenting upon my sexuality as an adult but I am looking back to childhood as a starting point for learned gender roles. We are initiated into our roles as adults in childhood.

My exploration of the ideas discussed in this paper led me on a path of artistic and self-discovery. I found sculptural and new media processes that best fit my conceptual interests. I dove into personal and theoretical interests that incorporated femininity, voice, domestic space, carnival and the body. The space and sound of the artwork references childhood, but it is also an expression of adult identity. I hope that my installations communicate to viewers and help them to connect with the concepts I have expressed. I also hope that they bring their own interpretations, experiences and references to the work. Finally, I intend for the experience of the installations to be inclusive, intimate and powerful.