Faculty of Art

Cross-Disciplinary Art: Life Studies

Emily Withers

An Individual's Subjective Pathetic Fallacy

A cross-disciplinary exploration of the self, through the self-cloning Marmorkrebs Crayfish.

“An Individual’s Subjective Pathetic Fallacy is a multi-media sculptural installation. This work centres on my personal experience of the self, focusing on individualism, regeneration, subjectivity, and my intersubjectivity with the all-female, self-cloning Marmorkrebs Crayfish. Subjectivity is the experience of a self aware, conscious being, and is created from interactions with other conscious beings and the objects in our environment. It is everything we absorb through our senses during every moment we have ever lived. This is what shapes our thoughts, tastes, and opinions. Therefore might the Crayfish hold different subjectivities despite their identical DNA? I attempted to fragment my sense of self by multiplying and distorting images taken from my life that represent a significant moment that altered my subjectivity. By taking the images and Crayfish, created each with a different materiality, and with sawdust recycled from the wooden figure, I show what an individual’s consciousness may look when fragmented, and when whole. We are reminded that although different, we are connected and exist within our connection. Within the repetition of material, form, and bodies we find power within the layers of the present individual. With a crayfish exoskeleton decomposing in her mouth, I hope to show that our collected subjectivities can be re-digested, as the Crayfish may re-digest her exoskeleton or offspring. We can always take these combinations of moments that make us up, to form new, current versions of ourselves. Versions who can continuously grow their own subjectivity, multiply, distort, create change, and become more. We can learn from the Crayfish to swallow past experiences in order to regain their nutrients. I hope people will see themselves in my work and think about what has made them who they currently are, to see in how many ways we are all connected, all the same, and yet all unique.  ”