Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the artist’s book series A Walk of Twenty Steps, a performative autoethnographic practice-based study considering the ways in which creativity performs tacit understandings of the self, and challenges marginalisation, shame, and isolation

Paper long abstract:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981) propose that objects contribute to the development of identity when they ‘help create order in consciousness at the levels of the person, community and patterns of natural order’(p.16). This paper will discuss the artist book series A Walk of Twenty Steps (Kealy-Morris 2016), designed and developed by the author over a four-year period to document both her estrangement from and resistance to the normative homogeneity of the suburban American main street of her hometown (Kealy-Morris 2017). Here was where a childhood diagnosis of a spinal disability separated her from everyday freedoms and dress of her peers. This paper proposes the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book. The artist’s books perform a ‘counternarrative’ (Reed-Danahay, 1997) through which personal memories are explored as self-described evidence rather than a set of official truths. In doing so, these practices create a legitimized space for alternative narratives to be articulated and in doing so challenges marginalization, shame, and isolation.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981) The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kealy-Morris, E. (2016) A Walk of Twenty Steps. Available at: http://www.ekealymorris.com/a-walk-of-twenty-steps.html (Accessed: 08.12.2023).

Kealy-Morris, E. (2017) The Artist’s Book: Making as embodied knowledge of practice and the self, Unpublished PhD, Chester, UK: University of Chester. Available from: https://chesterrep.openrepository.com/handle/10034/620375

Reed-Danahay, D. E. (1997) Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, New York: Berg.