Kara Dunne

Kara Dunne

MFA Printmaking

I Don’t Give a Shit
Mental Hydration

I am flirting with the idea of developing my own representation of femininity through the lens of the antiquated classic feminine image. I am working with this subject through ‘passionate acts’ and ‘running’, recreating cinematic type scenarios and gestures in which I can replay and edit the projection of the feminine icon, referencing both cinema and history’s representation of the ultimate feminine through the use of satire.  

What does it mean to be a woman in today’s society? The overall accepted idea of what is ‘feminine’ has certainly changed and shifted considerably from a hundred years ago. It has even shifted genders a bit. Transferred over to the effeminate male. In the muddy yet progressive waters of gender and sexual identity, we are riding this so- called ‘fifth wave of feminism’, but where is it taking us? We are not to forget how far we’ve come, of course, but where exactly are we going?

I am losing my bearings. With being a woman and its expectations, with the breakdown of social constructs, with the unsteady world around me, with the spiral we are continuing to travel, circulating downward to the unknown. Whether what we are spiraling toward is good or bad, we cannot know until we reach this hypothetical ‘bottom’. There is this strange homeostasis today in many regards, of things changing at the same time just as much as they are struggling to remain the same. Our traditional and narrow minded ideals and our material and personal dependencies are being uprooted; they are floating around in this purgatory of sorts. I find myself floating as well, in the middle of the road with everyone else, wondering what will happen next. My way of communicating this uneasiness of self and vague sense of being is through creating imagery and video work that speaks to this sense of in between, the idea of the endless vs. the finite. I do not know what it means to be ‘feminine’ anymore, I only have references from the past. I can only grasp at straws, and build my own steady ground, my own language. I know what it will mean to be a woman to a certain point, but I am not certain of the future; I cannot make predictions of where woman, for example, will end up. What I can do, though, is spiral downwards with a purpose.