Immurement, to be buried inside a wall. My first encounter with
this word was in a fiction called The Three-Arched Bridge, in which
a person was buried alive in a wall.
In terms of identity, I could immediately identify with the concept
and psychology of immurement. Not only as a feminist or domestic
issue, but also as part of the greater human condition, as aspect
of social roles and structures.
Immurement: Wallpaper is one perspective of immurement and domesticity.
Loosing one’s identity, being dissolved into the surrounding
environment. Becoming part of the furniture, part of the infrastructure,
part of the house. Bed. Sofa. A comforter. Decoration. Wallpaper.
Wallpaper that breathes.
Woman as wallpaper reminded me of an early feminist story, The
Yellow Wallpaper, about a woman’s descent into madness. This
is how the color yellow entered the sculptural dialogue. Further
associations with the color yellow: a color that represents sun
and sunshine; jaundice, a destructive virus and fever.
Originally all yellow through resin dyes, subtleties of form were
lost in the color, so I painted out some of the yellow with white
oil-based enamel, and then painted out some of the white to add
or recover the yellow. Although the first need to paint was a formal
balancing necessity, I like the added burial, a further wiping-out
and walling-in with shallow depth and cover.
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