HER RITES Artist Statement
Embarking on this artwork series for the book HER RITES with Dr. Christy Bauman has been an exciting challenge and great honor. The wonder and excitement has all but grown exponentially since placing my pen down. Each art piece serves as a portal into a specific right of passage. It’s the first view, meant to open your heart visually to the intent, the message and the heart of what you are about to embark on in that chapter. Without reading the chapter, the image serves to be a visceral moment felt as well as visually read, as the artwork unfolds itself to you.
During one of our brainstorming sessions Dr. Bauman said, “This work is how we wash and comb, braid and anoint other women - this artwork, these words, this effort”. Those words became a propelling force through me. As artwork is my voice, it is my hope that these images and words, lovingly open, nurture and begin healing for your deepest most intimate spaces.
Themes
The Circle, the Halo, the Cycle.
Because each of these rites of passage has to do with a God-given aspect of our lives, I wanted to give a nod to antiquity by using a halo effect to note the deity, or divine nature, in each of these. This circular feature also shows the cyclical nature of each of these Rites, the way we must again pass through at different times and ways in life.
Hair.
Our hair has long been a symbol of our beauty, our life force or fecundity. Worn in various ways, but always cared for, maintained, styled and cherished. Our beauty for me is irrevocably connected to what we create.
Stars.
Abraham was promised a blessing and inheritance to multiply his family to be as numerous as the stars. As a woman, I always felt irritation that in stories of faith, they didn’t talk of what women’s inheritance was. When I carried my daughter inside me, her tiny body already carrying the eggs of all my grandchildren, I felt as though I carried a starry night of seeds within my body, and all the promises of inheritance that was talked about for Abraham, was really for women. The stars represent that inheritance, that promise of goodness.
rite of Birth
Early on our talks, we joked about the moment in The Lion King where Rafiki thrusts Simba up into the sky and the circle of life song erupts from a chorus of animals. The energy of this reflects the moment directly from utero are you, presented into the sky, new, wet, umbilical cord still pulsating, cloth flying, and your lovely enormous cry reverberating through the night. We are birthed, we own our own bodies and voices, our birth cry. The radiant moon halo backlights the sound waves erupting from your mouth. It was very important to have motion in these pieces. I wanted you to feel the animation, be pulled into that moment and experience again your voice untethered.
rite of initiation
“Initiation is the moment we cross from naïveté to knowing.” For this work it was important for me to convey a feeling of being initiated into something, even though sometimes when you’re initiated, you are doing it alone. Whatever it is; first time bleeding, first child, rape, miscarriage, lovemaking, finding your calling, death…you are becoming a part of the circle of those who know. Behind the young woman, the experienced woman embraces her. You have been both women. You will continue to be both as you pass through this rite in cycles throughout your life. You are the innocent who now knows. You are the circle of women whose arms enfold those who are initiated into whichever moment. The halo of the young woman’s hair becomes one with the older woman’s hair, completing a circle. The young woman is being anointed by another sage femme who is inviting her into the fold, holding her story and helping her consecrate it.
rite of exile
You may have noticed that this is the only image of the series that does not include a halo effect. Exile is times of complete isolation that you feel you are utterly alone, without hope and without the presence of God. In exile, you don’t even feel the cyclical nature of these Rites, as this feels like the last, the end. As you walk out of the Red Tent into the desert, night rushes around you. Stars behind you and stars in the distant beyond, but nothing but blackness and desolation between.
rite of creation
Here I wanted to create a woman in motion; diligently, lovingly, determinedly weaving her hair, her beauty, her life force into the tapestry before her. This tapestry rolls out and in turn becomes the cloak that she wears. What we create adorns us when we create with our soul.
rite of inuition
“Intuition is vital to the strength of one’s voice”. Dr. Bauman and I were discussing using a mirror to express looking inside oneself or knowing within, but rather than getting caught up on the eyes of another soul, we landed on the mirror affect of water. Water is life-giving, deep and old. This drawing is from the your perspective - bending down to touch your own reflection, circles emanating from that contact to create the reverberating halo. True knowing is with touching that deep internal part of you. Dandelion wishes frame the edges of our most childlike moments.
rite of legacy
This woman seems to be caught in a moment of rapture and reflection. She grasps her long, flowing hair, a physical representation of a life’s work. It trails to her feet and beyond, stretching behind her as she walks. You become aware that out of this beauty, this hair, saplings are emerging. This is the very process that created the entire forest that she’s walking through. She created this with a lifetime of offering her beauty, her creative force to this world. Sunlight through the trees backlight her with an ephemeral halo of light. It wasn’t until a year after completing this work that I realized the subconscious meaning in the pebbles. My husband always talks about each of the things we create represent one pebble on a pebble beach. The concept is to look at ones’ works not as “wow, that’s the most beautiful pebble ever” but rather as “Wow, that’s a beautiful beach”. The big picture is everything that a life is made up of, it’s the culmination of your life’s work. I love being spoken back to from the artwork. It is living and speaking to me on its own.
seeding the sky
The title piece, Seeding The Sky is a heart song. It is an exuberant display of offering that vulnerability within into the night, sowing and hoping those seeds grow. Her arm and hair connect with the arc of seeds to close the ring. Those seeds become the stars- an inheritance, the promises, beauty and goodness.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you my heart and my thoughts. It is my hope we can create together beautiful space that we might own ourselves, and everything that we do becomes a powerful cry to live and create and be.
- Kinsey Aleksi