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| Bekah Wilson - Visual Artist |
I sometimes feel like a pieced-together, composite creature of science fiction, made up of thrown away things, roaming the landfills and derelict places of earth in search of components for which to build myself anew. With these fragments of an imaginary past I try to replace a present toward which I have become disillusioned. One piece at a time, I strip and replace my factory parts with these found illusions. Eventually it becomes impossible to distinguish past from present, and other people's lives and dreams from my own, and the authenticity of past and present, mine and theirs, is thrown into question.
I'm not sure I can say that this is
the reality in which we live today, if only because the image of a being that
consumes dead things, and other peoples' experiences, strikes particularly
American and cosmopolitan. But in my own personal life I am struck by the
absence of borders separating the past from the present, the common from the
uncommon, and the passé from the trendy. I inhabit a world of
multiplicity, incongruity, and muddied water. It is a dizzying and flighty
madness which many sense and few fully cognize, a situation to which I am
curiously drawn.
In my work, I take this condition and
try to make it tangible, often by using women's bodies as vehicles for, and
icons of, penetration, absorption, and transformation. So I draw on my
conflicted and contradictory experiences as a woman, as well as mediated images
of other women's experiences, in hopes of creating something that is at once deeply personal and also, if not
universal, reflective of the generalized condition of a particular place
and time—what, now many years ago, people began to call the postmodern
condition, whatever that means.
BIOGRAPHY
I was raised and home-schooled by two evangelical Christians in a rural, economically depressed town in Northern California. I would fill my long unregimented days reading books borrowed from the local library, creating fanciful drawings, and making craft out of anything found lying around. At age 15 I was allowed to attend public school for the first time, where my artistic capabilities helped me to gain the acceptance of my peers. But life after high school presented much greater challenges. Finding my social footing was much more difficult in the broader and more complex world of adulthood, and relations with my family became deeply strained as I more openly moved away from the religious and political principles under which I was raised. All of this led to a serious and prolonged period of depression that only seemed to lift as I pushed forward towards my artistic and educational goals.
Eventually I was
accepted to the University of California, Davis, where I studied Studio Art and
Socio-cultural Anthropology, receiving honors in both majors that included an
honors thesis in anthropology and a senior show and project in art. After graduating college I had the
opportunity to teach a course on personal and professional development at an
adult vocational school, and I am now a college counselor and practicing artist
living in the city of Sacramento, California. I plan on attending
graduate school in the very near future, and hope to one day teach art on the university
level.
