Resonance by Stephanie Taiber

Issue 116

In Resonance, I am interested in the shift between how a woman is seen and how she sees herself. The conflict that arises between internal and external constructs of female identity is an undercurrent that continues to shape my work. Influenced by my own experiences as a woman, daughter, wife, and mother, I explore inner tensions that result when socially prescribed constructs for these roles challenge personal narrative, both real and imagined, and the transformative nature of self perception that inevitably occurs with time. I often turn to Virginia Woolf not just for inspiration but for a sense of companionship. Here, inside this fictional friendship, I flourish with perceived validation and see, maybe for the first time, a pervading silence.

Referencing autobiographical moments and rhythmic patterns of self-reflection I acknowledge a natural oscillation between intimacy and aloofness, longing and withdrawal, time and space, then and now. Within each moment I am identifying an essential value, something concrete and material, to represent ideas of protected intimacy and a perpetual distancing from the self. I call upon a veneer of vulnerability and conventionality as a purposeful appliqué in protecting one’s own privacy though out the lifelong process of needing and being needed. Inside this space sexuality and strength emerge outside a framework of prescribed behaviors designed to empower others. I am compelled by the idea that the mind is not simply the content of its thoughts or even the feelings of a body, but is also distributed in the world and projected onto objects. I incorporate material forms as markers of time, place, and personal significance, creating a visual language for musings of worth, vulnerability, and power.

The use of pink allows me to flow in and out of public and private assumptions of female sensibilities and identity while connecting a chronology of moments into a sequence dictated by impact. The color itself hinting at a presence, attaching and recoiling from an implied cast of others. I also look to the physics of waves, a major motif in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, as a structural foundation for my image making. Waves ascribe to the patterning of emotional fluctuation and the perpetuity of endurance. I am constructing a rhythm, like waves, like breath, to the act of being a woman.

Stephanie Taiber lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
To view more of Stephanie’s work, please visit her website.