Artist's Statement: Bellavia
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I began my past work in an attempt to understand what feminism
was. In focusing on this endeavor I myself found that I was a
feminist (though I will still claim I do not truly understand
feminism).
From those earlier pieces, I learned that my work centers on
my need to explore my identity and to assert my sense of sexuality.
It is this process of defining/redefining an image of the self/body
in this culture that I discovered what has been generally been
taught about oneself is inaccurate and distorted; a new definition
of the self must be created through personal modes of perception.
In my current work I have focused on allowing my creations to
become part of a primordial search into my body, my identity and
myself. I venture to search for an impure balance, a balance that
becomes a tangible and emotional aura. I create works that embody
emotions and dreams that give me a voice to confess who and what
I am. Here I am able to learn what exactly that is and as a result,
each piece intrinsically has strong introspective undercurrents,
which are part of a complex multidimensional self-portrait as
a whole.
I am working from the desire to heal myself and perhaps in the
process lead others to heal their wounds. The weeping of these
wounds becomes the confessional; the transformation that art brings
me. The transformation brings a partial truth into a truth, which
is in the realm of becoming fully true. As I determine what is
fact and what is thought or feeling I can name it, I can create
it. My body is my subconscious and my identity is formed through
this process. It is this commitment of body that makes art real
for me. In taking the idea and internalizing it, I remove it from
language (verbal) and find where it resides; there is where the
act of creation occurs.
Like shamans, who heal themselves in order to and as a result
of healing others, so do I, through this creation, advocate a
healing for individuals and for society. As the shaman expresses
their art through healing so does the artist heal through expressing.
Tapping into a collective conscious based on shared social experience
to give different viewers the ability to understand each other's
reaction becomes an end goal for my work. Viewers may not be in
agreement with other reactions or may be diametrically opposed
to them, but they are confronted with it, and pushed to accept,
at the very least, its reality.
I look to create sculptures that take up not only a physical
space around the viewer but also infiltrates their psychic space.
This space is a type of memory continually shared and generated
within everyone. I endeavor to gently reveal the existence of
a presence whether it is directly related to the figure or suggestive
of a space wherein a figure or spirit may reside.
At many points in life I have upheld the notion that art chooses
the artist. I am not venturing to reinvent myself but rather working
to clarify and expand the path I am on.
