ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

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JULIA KIRBY

‘THE BODY VULNERABLE’

How does my own experience with my body effect how I see other people’s bodies? How do I view my own body? Why do I wear makeup? Why do I feel the need to perfect my skin? How altered is my own image of myself and why am I so concerned about how other people see me/how I look to them?

What does it mean to be vulnerable? Is vulnerability necessary in order to connect with other people and the things surrounding you? There have been times in my life that I do believe I was able to form a relationship of trust and be completely vulnerable. I don’t know if it was because I was naïve or because I was so eager to trust, but I am currently at a place where forming real connections and trusting people feels nearly impossible to me.

It is hard for me to allow myself to be in any situation that causes me to feel vulnerable. I feel as though I have to protect my body from other people even at times when I would guess there is probably no real threat of harm. If I start to feel like my body is in a vulnerable position I panic. I am usually not really able to connect with other people because I put up this guard between my body and everything else around it. Whether this potential connection would be physical or emotional, I tend to sabotage any chance it has before it begins by remaining as guarded as possible. People are the most intimidating thing to me because people make me feel the most vulnerable. People are the primary cause of most of my anxiety, in addition to being the reason why I feel like I have to protect my body from ever being too vulnerable.

This being said, I still allow other peoples’ views to control my own perception of my body. I have developed an irrational fixation with evaluating my appearance and trying to control the way that people see me/ how I look to them. I worry that when anyone is looking at me that they are going to be thoroughly examining me for any part of my appearance that has something wrong with it and does not look perfect. It is to the point that I am unable to be in the presence of another person if I am not wearing any sort of makeup or aid that attempts to hide my flaws, particularly flaws in my skin. Anytime I see my reflection I automatically start searching for imperfections so that I can try to cover them up. I have this idea in my head that my physical flaws are going to scream so loudly that it’s all people will see when they look at me. I feel like describing it as just an insecurity is not entirely accurate. I am honestly convinced that even the smallest blemish or wrinkle will be the only thing that a person can focus on when they look at me.

Because of the objectification of my body that I have had to deal with my entire life I can’t help but to assume that when someone notices a flaw in my body, my worth significantly decreases. This notion of being devalued has been amplified by additional experiences to the extreme so that I often feel completely worthless. I don’t feel the same way about anyone else’s body, just my own.

Because I am unable to believe that I am worth as much as another person, or worth anything for that matter, my struggle to make a legitimate connection with others is so much more difficult than it probably should be. The only situations in which I feel vulnerability is a non-issue are those that involve non-human being. My cat, for example, poses no threat of harm to me whatsoever. He can’t one day reveal himself to be someone that he is not. There is no fear of being hurt, so in this case I am able to actually form a relationship of trust and connection. It is simply less intimidating to try to feel connected with the world around me when it does not involve people. In order to live in this reality I can at least try to understand the relationship of my body and my being in respect to the natural world and other inanimate objects. If I am able to learn how to do this I have the hope that at some point I will get to a place where I can finally understand how to relate to the people around me. However, I have a hard time believing that there is any route for me that will get me back to a place where I fully trust someone. Since this path may not exist, I want to utilize the opportunities that I have to connect with everything else. Maybe this effort will help me progress to a partial ability to trust another and make legitimate connections with people again.

In these photos I am exploring the connections between my own body and the natural world around me. I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable in respect to nature in the sense that I have abandoned control over how the earth and dirt can cause imperfections in the appearance of my skin and am allowing it to become something that is possibly beautiful.