Natasha Faye Jensen
My artwork centers feminine narratives in aesthetics, media, history and personal experiences. As a research-based artist, I’m fascinated by the construction of the female fantasy and female gaze as it either coexists or conflicts with contemporary lifestyles and feminist goals. Of particular interest are how my chosen subjects’ or artistic mediums relate to and impact women’s issues and social equality. Within these dichotomous themes, I want to investigate vanity, consumerism, sexuality, sensuality, power struggle, colonialism and the sublime. My artwork’s feminist grounding, are purposely subtle, much like contemporary sexism.
I am inspired to utilize traditional drawing methods, like representational drawing and 2D animation. Such mediums contain their own patriarchal or submissive history and modernizing them to convey how particular cultural practices are often at odds with women’s parity. For example, my pencil crayon drawings push the concept of drawing as high art, drawing as feminist, and drawing as a tool to address contemporary women’s issues – reproductive health, sexuality, and gender roles. My animations work similarly by reclaiming 2D animation from artists like Max Fleischer to Norman McLaren and giving it a female view and authority. My art aims to modernize women’s identities and ideals commonly portrayed within fine art and craft. By exploring historically gendered art, traditions, and rituals, my artwork endeavours to examine the nature of our customs, how they affect women and create a conversation about what it means to be an autonomous woman today.
