Persimmon Blackbridge
Bio
For the past 35 years, Persimmon Blackbridge has worked as a sculptor, writer, curator, performer, editor, cleaning lady and/or very bad waitress. She has a learning disability and kidney failure and a psych diagnosis. Or two.
Winner of the VIVA award for visual arts in 1991, a 1995 Lambda Award in Washington DC, the 1997 Ferro Grumley Fiction Prize in New York City, the 1998 Van City Book Award, and an Emily Carr Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, Blackbridge’s work been shown across Canada and the U.S., as well as in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.
For the past 35 years, Persimmon Blackbridge has worked as a sculptor, writer, curator, performer, editor, cleaning lady and/or very bad waitress. She has a learning disability and kidney failure and a psych diagnosis. Or two.
Winner of the VIVA award for visual arts in 1991, a 1995 Lambda Award in Washington DC, the 1997 Ferro Grumley Fiction Prize in New York City, the 1998 Van City Book Award, and an Emily Carr Distinguished Alumni Award in 2000, Blackbridge’s work been shown across Canada and the U.S., as well as in Europe, Australia and Hong Kong.
Liminal Barbie 1
pine, plywood, stain, scrap metal, scrap plastic, wire, medical tubing, feathers, wax, bone, brass rod, doll head
3" x 10" x 18"
nfs
pine, plywood, stain, scrap metal, scrap plastic, wire, medical tubing, feathers, wax, bone, brass rod, doll head
3" x 10" x 18"
nfs
Liminal Barbie 2
pine, plywood, stain, scrap metal, wire, feathers, wax, bone, brass rod, fishline, doll parts
3" x 20" x 15
nfs
pine, plywood, stain, scrap metal, wire, feathers, wax, bone, brass rod, fishline, doll parts
3" x 20" x 15
nfs
Artist Statement
In Canadian culture, disability is not seen as a normal part of life. Our culture does not expect it, build around it, fold it into our day to day lives. It is outside of reality: tragic, magic. In art, magic realism, with its juxtaposition of ordinary and uncanny events, can be used to question how our society frames disability as a fracturing of ordinary life rather than an expected part of it to be accepted and accommodated.
That kind of questioning is what I'm trying to achieve with the Liminal Barbies. Liminal means the transitional space between one state and another -- the moment when the frog is no longer a frog, but has not yet become a prince. We are always transforming from state to state. Some transformations are socially constructed as unremarkable, and others are seen as peculiar, disturbing, a spell, a curse. Everyone who lives long enough will become old: this is considered natural. Everyone who lives long enough will become disabled (or disabled in a new way): this is considered unnatural. In the Liminal Barbie series, I used the Barbie Doll format because she is so ubiquitous and mundane. She is also in a constant state of normalized change: changing from one set of clothes to another is her central meaning. In these pieces, the transformation of her body instead of her clothes juxtaposes normalized change with deviant change, questioning the imposed judgement upon and distancing of disability.
A psychiatric diagnosis is like magic. It's fast and mysterious. The guy asks you some questions, compares your answers to what's in the book and presto! your innermost self is revealed (and if you have a different interpretation, that's Lack of Insight, you Muggle). For some people, a diagnosis can help articulate and navigate painful experiences. But for others, diagnosis is like being shoved into an ill-fitting box (and sometimes being sawn in half). Once you're in there, some people stop paying attention to your actual experience and see you only through the lens of your label. You have been exiled to the realm of the irrational: your stories are but symptoms.
The sculptures in the Diagnoses series are about the all-too-common experience of having a flock of labels that follow you about. Like in the fairy tales where the act of naming gives power, every new shrink has a new diagnosis, a new box to put you in and new treatments to go with it. It's hard to hold onto your own feelings and identity when a series of others, endorsed as the Experts on The Real You, give you name after name and expect you to answer to it.
Mistaken Identities is about misdiagnosis. You know the story, lots of us have one. Mine goes like this: for 10 years I was diagnosed with depression (magic!) while hypercalcimia (reality!) wracked my emotions and wrecked my kidneys, unnoticed because, hey, depression. When my real underlying condition was finally recognized, surgery cured it and my depression disappeared. Unfortunately, my kidneys are toast.
The figures in all these series are awkward and fit together from broken parts... not because people with disabilities are broken, but because we are human and the human condition is awkward and contradictory and stitched together from disparate pieces like little chimeras. The figures are dancing or flying... not because we have transcended our pain, or in any final way freed ourselves from the monster's jaws or the fracturing around us, but because we have strength, grace and wonder, inseparable from our pain, confusion and oppression.
In Canadian culture, disability is not seen as a normal part of life. Our culture does not expect it, build around it, fold it into our day to day lives. It is outside of reality: tragic, magic. In art, magic realism, with its juxtaposition of ordinary and uncanny events, can be used to question how our society frames disability as a fracturing of ordinary life rather than an expected part of it to be accepted and accommodated.
That kind of questioning is what I'm trying to achieve with the Liminal Barbies. Liminal means the transitional space between one state and another -- the moment when the frog is no longer a frog, but has not yet become a prince. We are always transforming from state to state. Some transformations are socially constructed as unremarkable, and others are seen as peculiar, disturbing, a spell, a curse. Everyone who lives long enough will become old: this is considered natural. Everyone who lives long enough will become disabled (or disabled in a new way): this is considered unnatural. In the Liminal Barbie series, I used the Barbie Doll format because she is so ubiquitous and mundane. She is also in a constant state of normalized change: changing from one set of clothes to another is her central meaning. In these pieces, the transformation of her body instead of her clothes juxtaposes normalized change with deviant change, questioning the imposed judgement upon and distancing of disability.
A psychiatric diagnosis is like magic. It's fast and mysterious. The guy asks you some questions, compares your answers to what's in the book and presto! your innermost self is revealed (and if you have a different interpretation, that's Lack of Insight, you Muggle). For some people, a diagnosis can help articulate and navigate painful experiences. But for others, diagnosis is like being shoved into an ill-fitting box (and sometimes being sawn in half). Once you're in there, some people stop paying attention to your actual experience and see you only through the lens of your label. You have been exiled to the realm of the irrational: your stories are but symptoms.
The sculptures in the Diagnoses series are about the all-too-common experience of having a flock of labels that follow you about. Like in the fairy tales where the act of naming gives power, every new shrink has a new diagnosis, a new box to put you in and new treatments to go with it. It's hard to hold onto your own feelings and identity when a series of others, endorsed as the Experts on The Real You, give you name after name and expect you to answer to it.
Mistaken Identities is about misdiagnosis. You know the story, lots of us have one. Mine goes like this: for 10 years I was diagnosed with depression (magic!) while hypercalcimia (reality!) wracked my emotions and wrecked my kidneys, unnoticed because, hey, depression. When my real underlying condition was finally recognized, surgery cured it and my depression disappeared. Unfortunately, my kidneys are toast.
The figures in all these series are awkward and fit together from broken parts... not because people with disabilities are broken, but because we are human and the human condition is awkward and contradictory and stitched together from disparate pieces like little chimeras. The figures are dancing or flying... not because we have transcended our pain, or in any final way freed ourselves from the monster's jaws or the fracturing around us, but because we have strength, grace and wonder, inseparable from our pain, confusion and oppression.
Five Diagnoses
mahogany, fir, pine, walnut, scrap metal, wire, brass rod, bone, doll parts
6"d x 13"w x 32"h
nfs
mahogany, fir, pine, walnut, scrap metal, wire, brass rod, bone, doll parts
6"d x 13"w x 32"h
nfs
Mistaken Identity 1
driftwood, padauk, fir, bone, brass rod
6" x 10" x 18"
nfs
driftwood, padauk, fir, bone, brass rod
6" x 10" x 18"
nfs
Four Diagnoses
yellow cedar, padauk, mahogany, pine, fir, driftwood, scrap plastic, scrap metal, brass rod, bone, doll head
10" x 11" x 20”
nfs
yellow cedar, padauk, mahogany, pine, fir, driftwood, scrap plastic, scrap metal, brass rod, bone, doll head
10" x 11" x 20”
nfs
Photos by Della McCreary & Rachel Warwick
Contact Information for Persimmon Blackbridge
This work is not for sale. No contact information available.
This work is not for sale. No contact information available.
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