Going with the encouragement to pursue photomontage as well as illustration, I sought out the work of Yobunoshi Araki, to find pictures of the disturbing and abject, a term described by Julia Kristeva as “the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. The primary example for what causes such a reaction is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even the skin that forms on the surface of warm milk.” I found Araki’s work to be an extension of this.
The format has also inspired me towards a zine or publication, the red amplifies the effect the seemingly graphic and disturbing images have on the viewer, though seen without a context and with a mind devoid of suggestion, the images may look mundane, even. A common theme is hair, orifices and organic clusters of matter, that might spur on tryphophobia (fear of holes) which i might employ in my work. This is also seen in Alessandro Bavari’s work.
“Alessandro the child artist would sit at a table drawing pictures of clowns with bare breasts and the Madonna with a moustache. In time, these childlike and whimsical representations morphed into darker, distorted, more unsettling interpretations of the human psyche. The work of Alessandro the adult artist, a fusion of mixed-media techniques, inspired by childhood impressions, delves into the very bowels of human despair.”