The Show Must Go Home: Senior Thesis Exhibition Spring 2020

Dara Feller

Public Works of Private Thoughts
Dara Feller

It is widely agreed that love is the most powerful emotion. Literature and art over time have proven that human beings have a fascination with love and securing it with a partner. Though time has not changed the human desire to love and be loved, it has definitely changed in the method of transmission and reception of the emotion. Pop culture and modern media have shaped the way we perceive love and furthermore, express it. Regardless of the cultural touchstone, the real world of love and relationships is far from how it is written in Shakespeare and fairytales. Public Works of Private Thoughts explores the navigation of this exciting and unfamiliar realm of love and heartbreak through the eyes of a modern woman. Saturated with the tropes she has seen in popular culture, the subject of these portraits has a romanticized view of the world. The character in these photos is a dramatized version of myself playing out the quotes as vignettes in my life. It is only through her experiences that she can begin to uncover the complexities of her desires. 

The integration of text in this photo series is speaking to the phenomenon of seeing reminders when thinking about something emotionally strenuous. The human brain is wired to search for patterns and meaning in everything we see. As we process emotions over time, it may seem like our feelings are spelled out in front of us; infiltrating our everyday thoughts. I have learned that to fully comprehend a strong emotion, I need to write down every fragment of what I am thinking and reread it to myself. The text in this series is all sourced from these writings, resulting in a double self-portrait through both the visual and textual elements. These photos came together through an elimination process of the quotes, along with devising a medium through which I could spell the quote to create tension. For I THINK ITS FUN TO FEEL SOMETHING, the tension is created through the apple being a cultural marker of desire. The text on the apple and the subject drooling just to get a taste comments on impulsivity and lust--feelings that can oftentimes lead to demise, especially in the cases of Snow White and biblical Eve. In IF U LUV ME LMK, the image plays with the notion of permanence. A tattoo is a permanent decision, yet the text within the tattoo signals uncertainty. 

The process began by sifting through years of journal entries and selecting the quotes I found to be the most impactful and illustrative of the emotions surrounding love and heartbreak. I consider these journal entries to be my most inner thoughts that I would never share: especially not with the people about which they are written. The execution of Public Works of Private Thoughts allows me to reveal snippets of my secret writings without being too overt or implicit. I would consider this method akin to songwriting. Musicians will write songs about the deepest aspects of their lives in incredible detail, yet they strategically leave out names or indicators for their audience to assume a subject. I settled on a collection of six photographs for the final presentation in order to offer a wide breadth of different expressions without overwhelming the viewer and giving each individual photograph enough space to exist on its own. The six quotes I chose were those I could best create a scene around while also being vague enough to engage the viewer on a personal level. 

The majority of the work process was in the production design of the individual photographs. Each photo required meticulous devising and sketching before the actual shoot. I approached this work as though it was a film production, considering hair, makeup, foreground, background, props, and lighting. The production quality and self-transformation are inspired by Cindy Sherman’s body of work. Sherman is most well known for her inventive self-portraiture and often overly emotive expressions. I sourced from my performative background and channeled it into my facial expressions. It was important to create a distinct setting for each photograph in order to contextualize the quotes. The work as a whole relies on viewer saturation in pop culture to fully unlock the intentionality behind each photo. SHOULD I BE FLATTERED? comments on the age-old practice of picking flower petals to determine if “he loves me” or “he loves me not”, while FOREVER is reminiscent of a 1980s high school prom-- a time where forever seems so tangible and heartbreak is almost certain. 

The work is influenced by Cindy Sherman, Bruce Nauman, and William Wegman in terms of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the photographs. The absurdity and comical aspects of the photos are inspired by William Wegman’s Reading Two Books (1970) and Bruce Nauman’s Bound to Fail (1971). Additionally, the visual puns such as in STILL HOLDING MY BREATH and MISS INTERPRETATION reference Nauman’s Bound to Fail, which is a photograph of his hands tied behind his back. The core of these photos was to communicate humor within a relatable context so my private thoughts could become publicly understood, even without the specifics of my personal situations.

To learn more about Dara's work visit:
https://darafeller.myportfolio.com

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