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hibiscusI / "The Vegetarian"
This décollage object explores the tearing away of Yeong-hye’s body and identity that occurs in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. By using the décollage technique, I was able to explore the visceral experience of physically being able to rip something away. Using everyday materials allows an inquiry into the internal self of Yeong-hye and the outside forces that are manipulative around her. Indulging in the lines between organic and inorganic, visceral and mundane in this crafted object gives way to a consideration of self-involvement in an experiential way. Embodying the violence that occurs in the text showcases the different power dynamics that are at play in the novel, allowing an investigation into Yeong-hye’s consenting and non-consenting actions. ELLA LAHEY ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: In my final project, I wanted to highlight the inner workings of the main character, Yeong-hye, of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian. In my previous reflections, on the making processes of décollaging, rag rugging, and typesetting, I tended to focus on the three narrators of the text and the format of the novel, which is split into three main sections correlating with each of the narrators. The text never gives us more than a brief glimpse into the thinking of Yeong-hye. Other than momentary dream sequences from Yeong-hye’s past, there is nothing to go on except the interpretation of those who are observing her. For my final project, I wanted to explore the inside of what has happened to Yeong-hye through an embodied approach. The text reveals how violent a process she is going through to try and dismantle her physical being ; thus, I chose to use décollage as my craft practice. In the piece, the viewer is able to see the rips and different layers at play as the internal elements of the décollage are exposed. Through my crafted object, I investigate Yeong-hye’s inner self and inner dialogue through an embodied approach. Letting myself indulge in the violence of the novel heightened my experience of reading and learning from the text, allowing me to expand my knowledge past the novel’s textual mode and access its meaning in an experiential way. The materials of the décollage were important to the process of creation: I had an opportunity to source the materials myself, as opposed to being given materials in a classroom setting to work with. All the materials I used were recycled from objects within my own home, including the backing of my piece. It is the backing of an old mirror that fell and broke, which I felt was fitting because that is exactly what Yeong-hye is trying to do: not be concerned with her physical appearance or looks. Incorporating this element of vanity into the process allowed me to be fully immersed in what Yeong-hye was trying to get rid of within herself. The brown paper that lines the mirror and that is ripped away to reveal the hibiscus center is from grocery delivery bags. I felt a need to include a dietary element in some way, as that is what Kang chooses to use as a vessel to explain her commentary about control and obsession in the text. The materials used for the central image primarily came from Vogue Magazine cuttings that I have been collecting. I found it ironic using superficial vanity-based material to represent a person who is attempting to get rid of her material self. What makes décollage so relevant to this text is that you are able to use the everyday materials of life to represent something larger than you, just as Kang does through the metaphor of vegetarianism in the novel. Finally, I felt the need to use an organic material in the craft, as Yeong-hye is preoccupied with being solely organic matter in her quest to become a tree. Thus, I cut off a piece of my hair to include in the décollage; this hair sprouts from the stomach of the woman at the centre of my piece. In a text that focuses so heavily on self-mutilation and destruction, I felt like I had to participate in some bodily way. By using my own piece of hair in my crafted object, I was able to feel a tiny part of the visceral experience Kang was trying to convey through her novel. The name of the piece is significant to the décollage as well, as I wanted viewers to interact with the text in different ways, without even knowing it. hibiscusI suggests that there are going to be more variations of the décollage, possibly hibiscusII or hibiscusIII. What I wanted to evoke with the name is that this piece is possibly not a standalone exhibit of the novel, yet I will never create another piece in the feasible series, making hibiscusI an independent décollage. This choice of name reflects Yeong-hye’s experiences in the novel and Kang’s commentary on the sexualized and gendered violence that is a common occurrence in South Korea. Though what Yeong-hye goes through is extreme and uncommon, the experience of being under the control of a patriarchal power is not. What Kang suggests is that sexualized violence can feel like a lone experience, but in fact an invisible pattern of it exists throughout South Korea and in other cultural contexts. What I found fascinating about moving through this experience through the book was the original reception of the novel, by both Anglophone and Korean readers. Published in 2007 as three separate novellas, the text was often interpreted by Korean readers as “bizarre and weird” but has since been sold as a cult classic (Shin). Prior to this final reflection, I was not aware of its previous status as a novella. I attribute this unawareness to my lack of time reading Korean reviews and only spending time on Anglophone reactions to the novel. This inattention to the original Korean publication reveals the problem of translation in both the actual text and the reaction to and circulation of it. Charse Yun’s “You Say Melon, I Say Lemon: Deborah Smith's Flawed Yet Remarkable Translation of "The Vegetarian" provides thoughtful insight into the problems of translations and why Deborah Smith’s translation is not entirely deserving of the criticism it has received in South Korea. He argues that though Smith added some ‘Westernized’ flair to the novel, “she successfully introduced a work of literature to people who might otherwise never have had a chance to read it” (Yun). This statement solidified how I felt about my own crafts I have been producing about the book this semester. At the beginning of the course, I was concerned with using a translated text and some of the challenges that would come with it, including interpreting correctly. While I do share some of those same concerns now, I view my process of making crafted objects around this text differently. Translation is supposed to allow others, who might not normally have the chance to interpret, an opportunity to comprehend and enjoy the text. That is what other students and I have been doing through crafted objects: interpreting a text and allowing our own experiences to fall into our final crafted projects. I do not expect my own crafted piece to be an exact replica of what the text represents and means, but rather a holistic view of my experience as one reader interacting with the novel. Décollage works as a way to interpret a text like The Vegetarian because of its readily available meaning-making by its viewers. This availability can partly be attributed to its connection to and derivation from collage. The history of collage is intertwined with means of processing the world and is “neither medium nor genre, but a mode; a means of processing the world as it was encountered by individuals across cultures and geographies, who subsequently produced a creative response to that experience” (Gowerley 13). Working within this definition of collage and décollage authorizes both the creator and viewer to use these creative processes as containers of meaning. Collage started out being perceived as a domestic act of compiling, cutting, and ripping—as a hobby—but eventually evolved into ‘high art’ performed by artists like Picassso (13). I am attempting to revert to this historical notion of collage as a hobby about self-enjoyment, not as a way to capture an experience. In Fragmentary Forms, Freya Gowrley discusses the use of ‘readymades’ in collage and the impact they had on how collage is formed: Readymades (that is, an already produced object taken and elevated by an artist to the status of art) pull at the seams of how art is understood and defined by encouraging a revaluation of issues long held to be at the center of artistic achievement, such as the demonstration of a high level of technical skill, or the true-to-life representation of a subject. Instead, readymades present the hand and mind of the artist, no matter what it makes, changes, or presents, as the paramount element in a work of art. (293) Readymades are pertinent to my own work in décollaging because using everyday objects such as grocery bags is important to interpreting Kang’s allegory of vegetarianism. Kang is using the everyday ritual of eating and what Yeong-hye eats as a way of exploring the everyday reality of women in South Korea, a reality that comprises an everyday experience of control and power by patriarchal powers. Overall, this final project has led me to consider all my previous crafts projects for the course. Looking through all my work done thus far has allowed me to make this final piece in a way that engages me in a whole, embodied way—and engages with the text to the utmost extent. Analyzing what makes Yeong-hye undertake these actions produces a process that posits how décollage functions to provide meaning from objects that can act as vessels for exploration. Working within this particular mode of meaning-making has been fruitful in all aspects of creation, from the materials that I used to my destruction of them. Taking a deep dive into Yeong-hye’s character has let me inspect both my own and historical creative processes.
The Literary Road Trip / "Badlands"
This project responds to the ending of Badlands, which describes the narrator's road trip to the Alberta Badlands. Trying to discover her father’s time as a paleontologist in Alberta, the narrator, Anna, encounters her father’s past, retracing his journey and meeting Anna Yellowbird, an Indigenous woman with whom William, her father, had sexual relations. Anna believes that her trip will shed light on William’s identity, but instead she comes to terms with his “sad” life spent looking for success. She then throws his field notes—the sole reminder of his existence—in a lake and looks towards the stars for guidance. My work shows my own road trip; it imitates Anna’s journey and ends with me throwing my novel in a river. Using three crafts, this eclectic project illuminates my novel’s parodic genre that satirizes the hero’s journey. It also elucidates Anna’s shifting selfhood, showing how she rejects her father to embrace sublime inspiration. JORDAN PRICE ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: In Robert Kroetsch’s Badlands (1975), road trips provoke moments of personal growth. The novel’s narrator, Anna, seeks to understand her now deceased father, William, and his time excavating dinosaur bones in the Alberta Badlands, but she has access only to his “cryptic” and “barely decipherable” field notes that detail his journey (2). At the end of the novel, Anna follows her father’s Alberta expedition, and she drives to the places he described in his notes, including “Drumheller,” “Bullpound Creek,” and “Crawling Valley” (259–60). Anna understands her father’s “sad” life spent looking “for that little ceremony of success,” and she throws his journal in a lake: “I threw it into a lake where it too might drown” (256–70). This project responds to this (anti)climactic ending, detailing my own literary road trip. My work taught me to consider my novel’s parodic genre and Anna’s identity. Kroetsch’s fifth novel, Badlands was first published in 1975 and reissued in subsequent editions in 1976, 1982, 1983, 1988, and 1991. Initial reviews of the novel highlighted both its comedic and mythic qualities. In 1975, Margaret Laurence celebrated the book for its “‘wild humour’” and ability to take “‘characters and render them into our own [Canadian] mythology.’” Critics in the 1980s and 1990s positioned Badlands as a deconstructionist text. In 1991, for instance, Dorothy Seaton argued that Badlands “deconstructs the New World myths of identity,” including tales of “heroic” masculinity (78). More recent scholars show how the novel depicts Indigenous peoples and histories; Stephanie McKenzie asserts that the text “laments” that “Aboriginal cultures have been offended and threatened” by settler imposition (145). My project uses three artistic approaches: letterpress, décollage, and photography. Letterpress is a 15th-century invention that was primarily used to publish news or books (Wilson and Grey 1–11). Especially in the 20th century, some presses used print art for activism (Johnston 68). For example, Zephyrus, a San Francisco press from the 1970s, used letterpress to promote the gay liberation movement and criticize the Nixon presidency (Johnston 68–70). Décollage emerged in France in 1961, and the craft usually communicated political messages such as anticolonialism or social anxieties post-World War Two (McDonough 75–78). In my photography prints, I used the editing function selective colouring, which involves turning an original image black and white but then revealing specific colours in the image. Selective colouring gained popularity in the early 2000s, and it was used to contrast temporal spaces, with black and white symbolizing the past and colour representing the present (Hirsch and Erf 181–214). While my chosen novel does not explicitly invoke letterpress, décollage, or selective colour photography, these approaches complement my novel. My text and literary interpretations create three temporal spaces. Badlands shifts between first-person and third-person narration; the former describes Anna’s diaries that are set in 1972, and the latter illustrates William’s time as a paleontologist in 1916. As someone who studies the novel, I create a third space: my present-day reality. Each possessing unique historical contexts, letterpress, décollage, and selective colour photography parallel my novel’s time frames as well as my embodied reality. As the oldest craft, letterpress calls to mind William’s journey in 1916. Developed in the 1960s, décollage symbolizes Anna’s diaries. Selective colour photography, which dates from the 2000s, is emblematic of my literary critical work. My project made me consider how Badlands satirizes the hero’s journey, a trope that describes a protagonist's successful struggle against a colossal obstacle and celebratory return home. Badlands retains aspects of this mythology. Anna states that William’s field notes contain stories about “male courage” (2). Anna also calls William’s expedition a “long journey, a . . . calculated casting into the unknown” that culminates in his arrival at “the greatest bonebeds in the history of paleontology” (127–28). However, William does not actualize his heroic aspirations, and his ambitions are stymied by the natural elements. In Chapter Six, for example, William and his crew travel down a river, but their boat absurdly crashes into rocks, causing their equipment to fall overboard: “They hit more rocks; the sacks of plaster of paris tumbled overboard: half of them, more, were gone” (28). While excavating dinosaur bones, William invariably falls. In Chapter Thirty, he sees a “grasshopper,” which he thinks is a “rattler,” and he falls “twenty feet down the side of a coulee” (152). Instead of relishing a victorious return from his journey, William dies en route, and his body is “never found” (269). While working on my project, I appreciated these parodic elements. Like William, I failed to achieve my intended goals. To follow William’s and Anna’s journeys, I wanted to drive to the Alberta Badlands, but my plans suddenly changed. During the only weekend I had available, this November’s “bomb cyclone” cancelled ferries to the mainland, which made me improvise and travel up Vancouver Island instead. I wanted my project to reflect the chaos of William’s expedition and my own trip. I cut the map of the Badlands, which was the background of my décollage, into four pieces and organized them randomly on my board. I haphazardly cut my photo prints in two. I took my novel and tore away pages, sticking excerpts wherever I wanted. While I was initially disappointed with the change in my plans, I realized that this discomfort led me to a deeper appreciation of my novel’s genre. When I had to change my itinerary, I became like William, who fails to achieve his desired heroic status, and my art reflected his farcical character. During my road trip, I started to appreciate how Anna constructs her selfhood once she abandons her interpretive impulse and turns to the environment as recourse. Anna draws on her father’s field notes as a source of paternal affection. She considers his notes to be the “only poem he ever wrote,” and particularly a “love poem” addressed to his “only daughter” (269–70). Anna tries to claim ownership of the journals, imposing her own meanings on William’s words. In Chapter Seven, for example, Anna illustrates her father writing terse and nebulous phrases in his notes, such as “I despite words” and “He is safe and sound” (34–37). Anna imagines his affective response to his writing, stating that his notes “freed him” and that he “stared at the sentence, enjoying it” (34). Yet at the end of the novel, Anna’s gaze shifts from her father’s field notes to the sky above. Once she throws her father’s notes in the lake, she walks “through the night,” looking at the “billions” of “stars” that provide her “light” to guide her “way” (270). While working on my project, I understood this aspect of the novel more clearly. At Goldstream Park, the first stop of my trip, I wanted to compare excerpts from Badlands with the land. While taking my photos, I wanted the text to be the key focal point. I tried using a shallow focus shot, which made the background landscape blurry and the text clear. As I did so, I had trouble reading the words on the thin page because the focusing effect only exposed the sun that shone through the paper; the backside of the page became faintly visible, which blurred the words. In response, I pulled the text closer to my camera lens, but doing so only covered the landscape and defeated the purpose. The sun, I learned, was overcoming my text. I realized that I was becoming like Anna who also imposes her subjectivity on a text but recognizes a more sublime source. While making my final project, I felt free. As I cut out and glued excerpts from my text, I felt that I had complete control of the art, putting Kroetsch’s diction wherever I saw fit. When I finished the project, I closed my eyes and touched the many different papers on my project. I noticed the glossy photo prints, the coffee-stained map, and the old edition of Badlands that I had torn apart. As I finished my work, I realized that I was oddly returning to the beginning of my novel. In Chapter One, Anna describes the tactility of her father’s journal, noting that she can feel “squashed mosquitoes, the spiders’ legs, the stains of thick black coffee, [and] even the blood that smeared the already barely decipherable words” (2). My project, I learned, was akin to William’s notes, becoming a tangible source of inspiration from which I, like Anna, try to derive literary meaning. Perhaps most importantly, my road trip taught me that scholarship can go beyond the confines of the campus classroom. As I drove alone with my copy of Badlands perched on my dashboard, I embarked on a journey with my novel, establishing a closeness between my personal life and literary knowledge. In doing so, I understood my text’s complexities more clearly. I also realized that academia and embodied space can productively coexist.
[Macalister’s Fish] / "To the Lighthouse"
This lino printed fish with pieces cut out is overlaid on a printed quote from To The Lighthouse and attached with embroidery thread and tape. Woolf, in her novel, mentions a fish whose body was “mutilated” and “thrown back into the sea,” and this mention of the fish highlights the relationship between social relations and embodiment (Woolf 243). The cuts in the fish allow for viewers to peer through at the underlying quote, seeing a potential answer to the proposed question, “What is the meaning of life?” – a question that guides the characters in the novel. This project does not allow viewers to perceive Woolf’s tentative answer; rather, it prompts viewers to consider the question themselves and participate in the discourse Woolf posits in her novel.