The Going Dutch Festival is a multidisciplinary arts festival that celebrates the female voice. The festival is run by Side Street Studio Arts in Elgin, IL, by its founders Erin Rehberg and Tanner Melvin, and a network of creative collaborators. My piece, "Feminine Matrixial" was a part of the 10th annual Going Dutch Festival (November 2020). To view the rest of the 2020 Going Dutch Visual Arts Exhibition, click here. To join the festival's free workshops, click here.
The piece is inspired by the female body, my worship for the land, and Bracha Ettinger's idea of the "matrixial feminine." For me, "matrixial feminine" / "feminine-matrixial" is a hard concept to explain because it represents a reality that has never been widely-accepted: a healing, love and woman-centered society that transforms us (like the wombs from which we all originated.) Accepting a feminine-matrixial reality would embrace horizontal orientations (signaling a landscape, mother nature) rather than the phallic and vertically-oriented design we’re accustomed to living within. Inspired by this Ettinger's idea, and worshipping Goddess more and more in my personal life, I’ve been driven to create this piece-which aims to move away from the typically rectangular parameters of artwork. This piece/peace rests horizontally and resembles a hilly landscape, or a laying female figure, and folds in many colors.
"Feminine Matrixial," 2x6 feet, torn paper collage on board. Photo by Sage Look.
