Smash

All of a sudden I have concerns towards my place in the art world. This past week I have been thinking about how hard it is to be an artist. Never having felt like this before, I have serious doubts about being able to express myself 100%. It's very hard for me to continue working on an eating disorder installation for my final major project as I have realised I am quite clearly still struggling with it. It wasn't until I started thinking about it and writing about it that I realised this. It's made me get feelings I haven't had in a long time, I began feeling anxious and unstable.
I tend to block things out and just have a laugh, as I don't see the point in speaking about problems of my past and putting myself down like that. So thinking in depth about a seriously intense time in my life has really changed my attitude. I found myself crying last night about how unhappy I am with my body. I haven't done that since I was like 16.
It upsets me, how I really thought this idea would work so well as my final major project, getting very personal and getting it all out. But I can't. Even speaking to Catrina earlier this morning- just telling her how I have to find a new topic and how I can't do it- my voice was jittering and I felt like I was panicking. It's a major part in the final major project to speak about the wok and the feeling but if I can't feel ok just thinking about it there is no way I can create work about it and then stand up in front of a crowd and talk about, as it goes so in depth with things that have happened to me in my childhood and teenage years, making a project about it would wreck me. I can truly say I don't know whats happening to me, If I can't get this personal how can I be a fine artist?
Art is meant to be therapeutic, its meant to get my mind off things and it's doing the exact opposite in this case. The two units I expected to enjoy the most are the ones I have done close to nothing on. The units that are less personal- more physical, I am extremely enjoying right now. Paper making is very physical is keeping my mind at peace and surface pattern is getting my mind to think about decades, what happened and how to create a pattern in that context. Which seems to be working a lot better for me. Why can't I be an illustrator or a fashion designer where the work hasn't got anything to do with my own personal life??????????

My initial idea for my final major project is to create an uncomfortable installation about the struggles of overcoming binge eating disorder and how it still affects me now.

The following images make a statement on how easily bodies are damaged but also how quickly they recover. Seeing a dietitian while struggling through my binge eating disorder has taught me how thankful we should be to our bodies because of how much they go through, instead of purposely damaging them. I have recovered through that stupid, childish and pathetic disorder, which I wish I didn't go through, it still roller-coasters through my life. Some things I did to my body are un-recoverable, some things I did to my mentality will stay with me for life and no matter how hard I will try it will remain a part of me.

What is binge eating disorder?

It's different for everybody. For me it started off with some harmless dieting, cutting out carbs and sugar. Led onto being extremely depressed about my weight at the age of 14, taking 2 packets of co-codamol (to get high, not to die) and being the next in line to get a liver transplant. Amazing example of fast body recovery - my liver recovered within 48 hours and no transplant was needed, I can't be thankful enough. After that it was fasting, binge eating, fasting, binge eating and my weight would constantly go up and down due to that. Leaving horrible stretch marks in areas of my body. By 16 I was basically fine, mainly because from 71kg I went down to 60kg without trying - thanks to intuitive eating and my dietitian.

Now I try to do what's best for my body, picking being healthy over aiming to be skinny. It gets so hard, the thoughts that go through my head sometimes disgust me. Sometimes wish I was unwell again, just so I'd have the control not to eat and to fast but other times I know that I'm better than that. I know I will never feel comfortable with my body and that goal weight is always at the back of my mind.

So to make things extremely personal and challanging I thought to take photographs of me that I hate because of what I have done/ what I'm doing to myself.

Buying clothes a size too small just to motivate myself to lose weight and fit into them. In this case - jeans size 8 because I don't want to believe that I'm actually a 10.