It’s A Girl (detail)
1 media/Its-a-Girl_detail_thumb.jpg 2020-07-27T07:42:42-07:00 Heather Carroll 8442613dd0a637c7584c42fc211c838ae2446814 34571 2 Senelier ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, by AK Garski. Image courtesy of the artist. plain 2020-07-27T07:43:18-07:00 Heather Carroll 8442613dd0a637c7584c42fc211c838ae2446814This page is referenced by:
-
1
media/Thread-Womens-Art-Institute.jpg
media/Garski.jpg
2020-05-19T17:29:40-07:00
AK Garski
11
plain
2020-07-30T13:27:55-07:00
It's a Girl, 2016
Senelier ink, watercolor, graphite on paper
"An ace bandage is tightly wrapped around a pink balloon distorting the text that proudly proclaimed my assigned gender. This balloon was gifted to my mother by the hospital when I was born on March 5, 1989. When my mother took me home she dressed me in a color she thought of as gender neutral: yellow. Yet she saved the pink balloon. I found it 25 years later, stashed away amongst my childhood mementos in the garage. When I touched the surface of the deteriorating balloon I felt the foundation of my soul shake. I was still adamantly identifying as a woman at the time, yet my artwork was always circling around the question of gender. The figures I drew and painted were bound in ace bandages. These bandages were historically used for breast binding, providing the wearer with relief from body dysphoria but restricting the chest cavity more and more with each breath. If my assigned gender does not link up with some core, fundamental part of my being, who am I?
It’s a Girl is a large painting and is intentionally installed so that the bottom of the piece rolls onto the floor. The delicately painted ribbon that hangs below the choked and deflated balloon extends into the rolled paper. Undoing gender is a lifelong pursuit. Who knows how far the ribbon must unroll before I find my own hand, grasping at the base?
What happens when I let go?”
