Kassi Sheppard

Censorship

This series combines my photography and textile practice to explore the question, what defines femininity? and explore the ideas of what society constructs as a woman, regarding how society categories certain aspects of being a woman, and how society still censors you regardless of how you identify and censors you if you don’t follow the constructed ideals of beauty that are imposed on woman.

“I have always been fascinated by the way a photo can convey emotion and I am motivated by the desire to bring out what is beyond the surface, responding to elements living in the natural world and focusing on issues around nature of the body, its flaws, and how socially constructed ideals of beauty are imposed on women. In this series, being a multidisciplinary Artist, I combined my photography and textile practice to explore the question, what defines femininity? and explore the ideas of what society constructs as a woman, regarding how society categories certain aspects of being a woman, and how society still censors you regardless of how you identify and censors you if you don’t follow the constructed ideals of beauty that are imposed on woman. Censorship is a huge problem throughout media, and images that could be viewed as empowering, body positive or informative can just as easily be seen as suggestive when viewed from a male perspective. I used hand embroidery, to censor and deteriorate the original photograph and form a pixelated version of the underlying image. I use the colour red because red is considered to be a sexually suggestive colour for women and using the bright red coloured embroidery, stands in contrast to the subdued grayscale tones of the photographs, censoring the human figure. I used hand embroidery as a way to counteract the toxic ideas society has attributed to the constructed ideals of beauty imposed on woman. I have always been fascinated with textile and embroidery and using this art form, that used to symbolize a different kind of femininity, will now bring forth new perspectives on gender and censorship through this body of work.”