Bea Hurd

Artist Statement

 My practice is a self-portrait. I would be remiss to say anything I make is not a reflection of my insatiable need for self-awareness, as I unravel my identity through exploration of my materialism. I never force my intentions, rather invite conversation between me and the materials. When I understand material desires, my intrigues can be found within the process. 

Tim Ingold suggests viewing objects as materials disconnected from their definition- a toddler’s perspective. This freed me to investigate everything. Alexandra Juhaz’s idea of “Queer Feminist Media Praxis”- feminism being a method rooted in collaboration, community, and power-sharing, with queerness as technology of feminism, led me to practice collective experience as research. I am consumed by Queer Gothicism and women in horror. A view that monsters are manifestations of the real-life horror of being queer and female. I frequent the canonical writings of feminist sexologists Betty Dodson, Janet Hardy, and Dossie Easton. Sexology and BDSM, its rejection of normative culture, focus on pleasure, and willingness to play with power, is instrumental to my work. 

         My practice oscillates around queerhood and diet culture. I explore my womanhood, while rejecting society's expectations. I view myself as a hollow woman, made of astroturf in my own design, turning lesbianism into gender. I investigate my relationship to food and my body, as it is simultaneously influenced by queerhood and heterosexual body standards. My practice breaks from the male gaze, and adopts a ravenous female perspective. I predominantly work in installation, film, and poetry. My art necessitates conversation with each other, and gains vitality as experiential installation. I utilize film to capture a moment, and manipulate how that moment communicates. My films are visceral interpretations of private performance pieces. Poetry functions as a malleable language- a flexible evocative take on an artist statement. 

I explore with raw curiosity and childish tactility. While exercising an allowance of researched naivete, I marry my adolescent inquiry and prodigious consumption of research- creating art that appeals to my current and childhood self. This yields a monstrosity of endless awakening. When bubbling self discovery is tinted by viscerality, I illustrate the reality of existing as queer, fat, and confused. Consumption is central to my practice. Be it consumption of food, sex, or materialism, I create spaces of shameless indulgence. I use art as a ritual to regain power. Whether I melt ice cream over my body or ask friends to pose naked, in this space, I am ruled by Freud’s concept of id.

        Creation is paramount to a product. As my art is ritual, its processes are informative. I hand stitch until my fingers are raw and create films so collaborative that the community is the project. I embrace mishaps and disasters. This is seen in my inclusion of off script footage, and in the crude way I stitch together ripped soft sculpture. If I am to truly allow my art to be a ritual of self-portrait, then I must embarrass my chaotic self-perception, and allow it space to grow.