We meet leading artist Zo\xeb Buckman from her studio in Brooklyn, NY!!! We discuss grief, trauma, her precise textile artworks and a powerful, new film titled 'Show Me Your Bruises, Then' (2021-2022) - a 3 channel video installation, written, performed and directed by Zo\xeb Buckman, and featuring actors Cush Jumbo and Sienna Miller.
Zo\xeb Buckman\u2019s multidisciplinary practice incorporates sculpture, textiles, ceramics, photography, and large-scale public installations. Adopting an explicitly feminist approach, her work explores identity, trauma, and gendered violence, subverting preconceived notions of vulnerability and strength.
The artist regularly chooses to work with objects symbolically associated with gender. Whilst her oft-adopted boxing gloves hint at a bellicose masculinity, Buckman also incorporates vintage fabrics into her work, from lingerie to dishcloths and table linen. These textiles, traditionally used and decorated by women, recall an intimacy with the body and a proximity to the domestic space. Bearing traces of their past, vintage fabrics point to a history of patriarchal subjugation, but also to the necessity and comfort of intergenerational dialogue between women.
Indeed, both verbal and non-verbal dialogue is an integral part of Buckman\u2019s practice. Buckman\u2019s eclectic choice of source material, the snatches of conversation, stained tablecloths, hip-hop lyrics, and, especially, lines from her late playwright mother\u2019s scripts, all represent mnemonic totems which, when taken together, establish a deeply personal constellation of the artist\u2019s lived experience.
'Show Me Your Bruises, Then' is the first filmic work of London-born, Brooklyn-based artist, Zo\xeb Buckman. The 17-minute long, 3-channel, video installation builds a portrait of the multigenerational experience of domestic violence, and explores the shame and stigma prescribed to the female body in a patriarchal society. The film depicts three women, each seated at the end of the table, reciting Buckman\u2019s own free flowing poem by the same name that she started writing in 2018. Although excerpts of the poem have appeared as text within Buckman\u2019s embroidery works and in the titles of pieces, this is the first time it is presented in its entirety.
In tandem with both the sculptural and wall-based works that have formed the basis of Buckman\u2019s artistic practice to date, Show Me Your Bruises, Then, seeks to foster nuanced conversation around consent, power, and violence, as well as highlighting the intrinsic joy, pleasure, and resilience that abounds the female experience. The rhythmic pattern of the poem and the three screen visuals build this notion of the power in sharing one\u2019s voice and story.
Visit: https://www.zoebuckman.com/ and her page at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London: https://www.houldsworth.co.uk/artists/57-zoe-buckman/overview/
Follow: @ZoeBuckman and @PippyHouldsworthGallery
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