Dawidek Gryglicka, Malgorzata;
(2025)
Bodygraphy The (ill) Body Narratives.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
Bodygraphy. The (ill) Body Narratives (2015-2022) is an interdisciplinary, practice-led, artistic research project on human corporeality understood as a form of storytelling. The central focus of the investigation is the search for visual and linguistic (self)representations of the ill female body and their analysis in selected iconography and literary works of illness. Combining the form of an intimate diary with an academic dissertation, this PhD sets out to create a series of art pieces exploring and exposing the significance of illness narratives as an artistic strategy for creating and acquiring knowledge about the human condition. The practi cal research, shaped by existential experiences and based on methods of self-observation, movement research, interaction with surroundings and media, including performance, drawing, video, and text, is presented through a hermeneutic perspective in the report. The research develops the original concepts of bodygraphy – various forms of expression through the corporeal experience (of speaking, writing, activities, gestures) and Affective Artistic Practice – a non-exploitative, caring method of creative work regulated by the body’s rhythms in the context of collaboration with institutions. The methodological framework is situated between such aspects of feminist discourse as écriture féminine (Hélène Cixous), the Möbius Strip (Elizabeth Grosz), affirmative ethics (Rosi Braidot ti), the post-structural concept of the excriptive body (Jean-Luc Nancy), the philosophy of existence (Jolanta Brach-Czaina), vulnerability (Judith Butler) and the tender narrator (Olga Tokarczuk); selected issues of humanistic medicine, including illness narratives and re-mission society (Arthur Frank); and contexts of female art in mediaeval and contemporary art history. The aspects of identity and first-person narrative are discussed in the context of the creativity rooted in the personal experience of illness in the works of Post-War Polish poet Halina Poświa towska and Polish-Jewish sculptress Alina Szapocznikow. Against this background, several questions are formulated: How can the affliction of bodily conditions be expressed while avoiding flaunting illness as an attraction, emotional blackmail, myths, and martyrology? What methods do women artists use to break away from the woman/ill=Other cliché? How might institutions rework the methods of co-working with artists with disabilities and long term health conditions without making them “the other”? This study aims to profoundly explore artistic language expressing a chronic crisis of the body as an integral part of identity and everyday engagement. It will contribute to official knowledge of rare, long-term, and invisible diseases, Disability Studies, and the history of feminist art and shift a paradigm of representation, functioning, and perception of the body, illness, and disability in contemporary culture, including artistic experience and working in the creative sector and academia.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Bodygraphy The (ill) Body Narratives |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > The Slade School of Fine Art |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204915 |
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