Saffron Williams - Crit#1

My work revolves around the use of archetypical imagery and symbols, and how they are used to define cultural or emotional concepts. Namely, being used to define or facilitate both religious spirituality, and womanhood and femininity as I feel intrinsically disconnected from both. Drawing from historical art methods used by world faiths, I use decorative arts, symmetry, performative ritual, and use of relics or objects to emulate what I believe faith or femininity should feel like. By crystalizing these concepts into a visual format, perhaps I can come closer to understanding. In my ceramics work, this in the creation of masks referencing anime girls and Tokusatsu costuming, as women portrayed in them are abstracted almost to the point of non-human, yet we recognize and accept these figures as female because of the artistic language surrounding them. Not only are they seen as women, but an idealized, more pure form that many hold at a level above. These masks serve to obscure the wearer and imbue them with an inhuman appearance. Wearing these masks is meant as a deliberate denial of human form in order to make a connection to the other side, across the veil and into the border.