#notokay
20 inches x 48 inches
50.8 cm x 121.92 cm
oil on metal
2016
In painting #NotOkay, I took much inspiration from writer Kelly Oxford, when she described the time she was sexually assaulted at the age of 12. Her hashtag NotOkay brought quite a storm on the internet, and I through I would take her story, as well as the tens of thousands of tweets in response, to expression in art.
Ms. Oxford’s story brought light not to just a terrible string of events, but a rather glaringly evident problem we have within our gender in society. Here, I wanted to bring awareness to sexual assault that happens on a day-to-day basis. Here, I brought essences of both masculinity as well as femininity in the mediums I chose. I sourced the base medium in sheets of scrap metal which I cut to be uniform with one another. The dark metal, the color that takes up most of the works, takes to represent the oppression of masculine energy within society. The pink panties, positioned on the lower half, takes to represent the current stage of femininity in common culture. They are all in different shapes and positions, but all have a common theme, in the shape of female genitalia, while at the same time positioned as if they were just thrown on the ground, as femininity has been thrown on the ground in light of sexual assault. In bringing the panties into the art, I used paint in a piping bag, using the same technique a pastry chef would frost a cake, I ‘frosted’ the paint onto the steel plates. However, because of the use of piping, the piped paint in itself is very sensitive, while the steel background itself remains largely intact. In doing so, the unconventional blend of different mediums break the boundaries between 2D and 3D forms of art. In #NotOkay, the use of the third-dimensional layer grabs another faction of attention between the viewer and the environment surrounding the image.
I hope whoever views this image will take more than just a glance at the panels, and hopefully see the message in societal reflection.