Fine Art: Dear Women / A Womxn
The Lover
The Fighter
The Nurturer
The Warrior
Mother of All
The Giver of Life
Women in all of her nature gives life in such a profound way. Without women, life would cease to exist, yet as a collective we devalue her strength, her wisdom, her presence and her
contribution.
Trigger warning: abuse
Dear Women is a tribute to women who have been hurt, abused and suppressed. It is a homage paid to women who have lost their innate powers and voices to mistreatment and oppression. It is the remembrance of the feminine power as individuals and a collective - the reclaiming of who we are.
This body of work conveys the stages of trauma, as a result of an abusive experience, through a visual journey. A series of four "walls" depict inflicted trauma, physical pain, emotional pain and mental battle.
Dear Women aims to serve as a platform for the voices that have been unheard, instill power where it is due, raise awareness on what we can do to implement change and break down sabotaging norms.
Wall of Destruction
The Wall of Destruction represents the first stage of trauma women go through after an abusive experience.
Women feel a lot of blame towards themselves and their perpetrator. They blame themselves for the abuse, for being there, for not being aware, for not being able to fight back. They go as far as shaming themselves for what has happened, even though it is not their fault. Shame is the number one emotion women report feeling at this stage.
On top of having to deal with the shame within, often women have to deal with the shame society imposes on them. They are commonly blamed for the assault, slut shamed, or sexually objectified.
Women fall into a state of confusion, hatred, isolation and loneliness from not being able to express or talk to anyone about their situation. This feeling of not being understood is a barrier to healing from the trauma.
There's a lot of tug and war - a mental struggle within - and this is why I chose abstract art to represent the inner conflict. Scratches and noisy lines of charcoal represent the rage and anger within, while surrounding negative space signifies isolation and emptiness.
Sculptures of chipped faces represent domestic violence and the feeling of losing oneself or pieces of oneself after an abusive experience. Women often come out of abuse not feeling like themselves, like they’ve lost the essence of who they are to the abuse.
As women, we hold so much strength and endure so much pain, from monthly cycles to giving birth, yet there is also power in our vulnerability, softness and emotion. This is where my use of plaster comes in. Plaster holds strength and it is robust, but at the same time, tremendously delicate.
Wall of Acceptance
The Wall of Acceptance revolves around self reflection, reflection on the abuse, then the conscious act of moving into a new space of growth. It is a move from the space of victimisation and helplessness to a space of power.
Only from a space of willingness and openness can true healing happen.
According to the law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be destroyed nor created; energy can only be transmuted or change from one form to another. This series
of paintings portrays the theory by demonstrating how plaster that moves across the art piece, interacting with the sculptures. It is also a reflection of how what you carry within is manifested in the physical.
Energies interacting with each other, combined with intention, results in transformation. The abstract art portrays a much calmer and more peaceful expression, signifying that with acceptance, comes peace.
This wall is play on energies. The power of choosing to move from where you are now with what happened to you to where you aim to be. We cannot choose our traumas, but we can choose the power it holds over us.
We can identify with the pain, become the pain, or use it as a crutch for growth.
Wall of Healing
The Wall of Healing shows authentic quartz sprouting from the cracks of the faces, signifying that healing happens from within, as quartz hold healing properties.
This wall is inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese art of precious scars, where broken pottery is mended with gold. Broken items can be pieced back together to be more beautiful than their prior state of perfection. Beauty lies in imperfection.
We all have the power to heal ourselves, but we need to show up for ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for our own healing process. We need to take responsibility for our own wellbeing and only we can do that for us. We are solely our own priority.
Wall of Life
The last stage of healing is represented in the Wall of Life. I’ve chosen to use flowers in this stage because I feel that women are the perfect embodiment of Mother Nature. We give life, we nurture, we nourish and we are so resilient. We are able to give birth and our body bounces back so effortlessly with its own intelligence.
The act of selflessness that comes so naturally to us in the process of giving birth and carrying life. We hold such creative energy to create and generate, which resembles the power of Mother Earth.
This stage is also a return back to Self. An arrival back home where our potential and innate power is at its wildest and rawest form.
It is a state of Truth before the conditioning has occurred; before the beliefs were adopted on what kind of woman we are to be; before your parents told you how a lady should act; before society told you what kind of woman was deemed acceptable; before the abuse, pain and the identification to it.
It is to encourage women to bloom.
It is a state of raw authenticity as we are, where we are most open and vulnerable. In this state, love flows. Only in that space can true healing and change happen.
It is a reminder to stay soft and open because only then can love come. To be kind and gentle to oneself because we’re all going through the same journey in different forms. To be forgiving and patient, just like Mother Earth has been with us. You can’t rush healing.
Dear Women Poetry
Even though these stages have been portrayed into four phases of trauma starting from The Wall of Destruction to The Wall of Life, our lives revolve around these stages indefinitely over and over again for the evolvement of our growth, the human consciousness, as a collective and as individuals.
We go through these cycles throughout our lives. We break so we can shred off these layers and arrive at a place closer to our self. We fall apart in order to grow continuously. That is part of life and the human psyche. Seasons change.
We are meant to change and this is the only constant.
A Womxn
Dear Womxn,
The Universe has painted you
with such inspiration
as a completion
to the circle of life.
How grand and majestic
is your presence
in the scheme of consciousness.
Without your contribution,
the world would cease to exist.
Womxn in all of her nature are already whole. But as ideologies such as patriarchy, sexism, misogyny continue to prevail and ingrain themselves as part of our societal conditioning, womxn are commonly found, unwillingly, in positions of discrimination and prejudice.
Widespread in the workplace, cultural traditions, media and on the Internet, womxn find themselves subjugated to criticism and judgement, going as far as pitting themselves against each other.
Our minds, through conditioning, have been subjected to point out attributes that don’t fit society’s notion of beauty. Womxn can never be good enough.
A Womxn is a series of works that celebrate womxn in all of her forms, regardless how that form manifests. It wishes to diminish the notion of an “acceptable woman“ which is unrealistic, stunting and unsubstantial to the process of development.
Society continues to put womxn in gender role boxes, however every phase of
growth is vital in our own evolution and serves a purpose for who we are becoming.
A Womxn aims to prompt introspective journey for the viewer, in order to reflect and find similarities between themselves and the subject they are judging.
In addition, A Womxn reminds viewers to be forgiving and respectful of womxn’s journeys, while diverting the attention back to ourselves, to help create a safe and loving environment for mankind.
About Amonwan Mirpuri
Amonwan Mirpuri is a contemporary Thai-Indian artist creating work that challenges the conceptual aspect between the human experience, mind, body and the soul.
Known for mixed media art, paintings and sculpture, her style leans towards abstract and surrealism, covering grounds of universal knowledge, personal identity, societal issues, consciousness and the human psyche. Amonwan's work is a redefinition of the relationship between the restricted self and freedom, and proposes the need for an awareness of identity and self to be able to recreate the rules that have suppressed and bound the self, existentially and potentially.
Amonwan’s art features representations of the identity, such as sculpted faces and paintings of the human body. Each artwork combines a variety of source material, colours, textures, and styles, which translate human experience and emotion into different forms.
Born on 18th June, 1992, in Bangkok, Thailand, she attended and graduated with a BA from a fashion design institute, Accademia Italiana. The artist resides and works in Bangkok, Thailand.