This exhibit springs from several sources.
When our boys were young, “super-hero” films were on the menu. My husband was game, and I went along with it for a while. But the relentless violence, “might-makes-right” trivializing the horror of it all, with expendable minions mutilated as “collateral damage”… I just couldn’t laugh it off but found it offensive. When would there be a movie where the super-heroes didn’t always resort to some kind of dominance through violence, but actually exhibited real leadership qualities? When would someone make a movie about the real Guardians of the Galaxy?
In my studio, day in and day out, I listen to NPR. All day long. Some may find this somewhat masochistic (they may have a point) but it serves to keep me connected with what’s going on in the world. As such, I am keenly aware of the status of women worldwide. It’s alarming. In this country, our rights and freedoms stripped away, this new focus on the “manosphere;” in other countries, the suppression of women continues unabated or ratchets up.
Where oh where are the Guardians of the Galaxy? I set out to explore this question.
To research, I sought mythology as a source for material and inspiration. Yet even there I found very few “intact” heroines. Often, various goddesses were subsumed by the patriarchy and morphed into gods. Or the female characters were traded or murdered by their fathers, raped, or used by men as pawns in their games.
So I decided to create my own mythology, with my own Cast of Characters.
This began by rendering figures in various postures suggesting the “super-powers” that leadership and protection require. From there, I thought about what they would wear. After all, what’s a superhero without a great costume? Using fabrics and colors I imagined could embody super-powers the Guardians would need for the task, I made them outfits.
“Anyone can wage war, but maintaining peace is a difficult thing.” Elif Shafak
Indeed. We have our own recent new war, waged, evidently, because our autocratic leader had “a feeling” and control of the world’s most powerful military. Just like in the movies, in real life we resort to war, with nameless people as “collateral damage.” Always a battle; always a winner and a loser. The result of this? More battles, more winners and losers. A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Yet leaders insist that they are keeping us safe, guarding us: we are going to war so we can have peace.
“Beauty will save the world.” Dostoyevsky
Beauty, posits one theologian whom I know, is synonymous with God, or the Divine. Beauty is an experience, a connection, not a judgment. And in order to experience beauty, on some level, one must apprehend their own beauty, thus, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Could this be so with super-powers? Perhaps the challenge is to see the heroic in ourselves, to be able to recognize and appreciate it in others.
Who, and where, are the Guardians of the Galaxy? And what are your super-powers?
