Janelle Bonfour-Mikes, The Blue Wallpaper
2020, cyanotype on paper, 82” x 78”
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The artist on the piece:
“The Blue Wallpaper (2020) is a cyanotype collage inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, The Yellow Wallpaper. During the Covid-19 pandemic, women have been forced out of the workforce at almost twice the rate of men and on average women perform 75% of the world’s unpaid labor. Each individual cyanotype piece was painstakingly printed and cut by hand. This work took over 300 hours to complete and is a metonym for the unseen and often unrespected physical, mental, and emotional labor that women perform. In addition to the amount of labor put into the work, each piece was exposed using the sun at the same time and for the same amount of time each day from October 2019 - March 2020. This process causes the final object to be a record of the sun’s strength and relationship to Earth. I used a contact printing process where I created an experimental drawing using my hair on acetate and laid that on top of the cyanotype emulsion coated paper, and then exposed it to UV light by way of the sun”
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Available for purchase or long-term installation only.
Janelle Bonfour-Mikes
“I am an episodic and autobiographical artist working across multiple disciplines to make the unseen visible. My work traverses medium and discipline so that I may find the most perfect way to communicate the banal, the traumatic, and the vexing thoughts that reside in each of us. I seek to find the beauty and the stillness in my existence and I hope that my work is able to inspire others to find peace.
I frequently use pattern and repetition in my work. I suffer from various comorbid mental illnesses and they often cause me to fixate and develop a cyclical pattern of thinking. Because my work is about my innermost thoughts the use of pattern and repetition is a symbol for how my brain functions. Pattern and repetition enables me to fully realize the work while still making it. Whether I’m working in performance, cyanotype, or installation, time and my body are always present.”
