Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Art

Second Department

Politics and International Relations

Reader 1

Kasper Kovitz

Reader 2

Owen Brown

Rights Information

© 2024 Nicole McDermott

Abstract

My body is central in my painting practice. As the scholar Gloria Anzaldúa describes her process of creation, the artist’s body grounds them in their material reality as it “responds physically, emotionally, and intellectually to external and internal stimuli . . . .” Like Anzaldúa, my painting “records, orders, and theorizes about these responses.” Bodily impulses propel me to explore a different arena of knowledge: my body’s intrinsic wisdom. I am able to make without the constraints of knowledge hierarchies, outside a homogenized, capitalist framework which severs us from bodily knowledge and other radically different relationships. By experiencing this energy flowing through my body, I am invited to feel our connection to something larger while in an intimate dialogue between myself and the work. It is a liberating art making practice to allow my body to be a portal, granting me insight into the constellation which ties all universal beings together and guiding me through the domain of intuitive and collective imaginations.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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