Artist: Existence Visibility Voice (2020)
This project is a work of artistic research and production initiated by Elizabeth in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. With the almost total collapse of her work portfolio, and grounded by travel restrictions, she found herself in an expansive physical and temporal space in the creative environment of Konstepidemin, a cultural centre in Gothenburg, Sweden.
While this work forms part of her artistic portfolio, it has immense relevance to organisational and communal life through its explorations of places of invisibility, silencing and non-existence, and the ideological and cultural regulation of approved behaviour, through the control and distortion of perception.
In the work, Elizabeth used the immense 7m by 3m wall of the studio for a collage of the material of her life available to her in Sweden, where she had moved from the UK several years before. Starting with her childhood photograph album, made lovingly out of the reject photos from the official family album, she photocopied all the available material on her life so far, to create a collage on the wall. Certain material was easy to display – her childhood photos, her early piano exam certificates – while other material provoked an inner struggle – her Bible, evidence of endless academic study. Confrontations also with the gaps revealed in common life experiences – an absence of life-partner or children – also provoked intense emotional turmoil.
Among the discoveries of this piece were the many aspects of herself which she recognised she felt obliged to conceal, in order to be accepted in certain work environments, certain religious settings, certain social groups and certain communities. More than that, the implicit rules governing each one were different. In most environments, some ways of being were considered more legitimate than others, and failing to adhere to or perform the legitimate behaviours was countered with shame, whether explicit or internalised. In each, the publically available images and discourse associated with the environment made it clear what was acceptable and what was not. Shame resulted from having a lived experience that was not reflected in the public conception of the environment. To insist on visibility or voicing of what was not legitimised through approved public expression was to experience fear, even panic, and sometimes rejection. Thus to genuinely contribute a new voice took immense courage and work. It was clear was that not everyone has the energy and power to spare for that kind of confrontation. And that in order to co-create a better world, we need the love and encouragement of true community, to strengthen each other and to nourish hope.