LILY AND INARA

2:27:00 PM

Proposal for my ART 497 Breakaway Class.

I was inspired by Renee Stout's "Conjure Woman" and the events of my own personal life to create two characters: Lily and Inara.

As a younger girl, I always had trouble talking and making friends. My solution was to come up with different versions of myself, different, more confident versions who had many friends and no inhibitions. I never gave them names, nor really distinguished between them. Eventually I think they all became a part of me, but to this day, I still don't really know what's real and what I invented for my imagined survival.

These two characters are created to express the power and weakness I feel as a woman and as a woman of Asian heritage. I'm taking inspiration from Hannah Wilke as well as Jerome and Joel-Peter Witkin.
*Adrian Piper- Catalysis

Their story will be told in a series of photographs.

Lily is childlike. She lives off of the thoughts and opinions of others. She cries for those in pain. Her happiness is tied to the happiness of the people she loves. She must keep them happy. It is her purpose and she serves it well.

Her mother told her stories and she became afraid of the world. Love or hide?

"It is a privilege to paint such difficult things" - Jerome Witkin

Inara is a warrior. She is strong for those who are afraid. But she's no saint.

In the beginning, a lot of me wanted to demonize her for her lack of innocence. But then I realized that Inara isn't evil. She's just responding to the horrors of the world in a different way. Rather than hiding away and being afraid, Inara embraces the horrors as worthy opponents, She respects them only insofar as to get what she needs from them, and then tears them down. Inara's name mean's "light of heaven" she was named after a Hittite Goddess equal to Artemis.

Neither one of them speaks.
*Yeah. idk if this is going to stay.... too cheesy? Maybe it'll be scarred rather than sewn shut.
** Already bought liquid latex and rigid collodium.
***... should they speak?