Christy Bailey VS MFA Thesis 2013
Healthy Body, Healthy Artist
From traditional to esoteric, the pursuit of health becomes trans-disciplinary when viewed through the lens of my art practice. Fallibility becomes more inspiring than reaching a physical or spiritual pinnacle of health. Infinite effort and devotion becomes a rich artistic space. “Healthy Body, Healthy Artist” is a mantra that I attempt to embody as I examine health on a personal level, while simultaneously playing the role of artist, teacher, and student to address our contemporary health system and its obsessions.
Healthy Body, Healthy Artist examines the performative and conceptual roles of daily health and art practice shifting between interior perception, the mind/body relationship, and historical and contemporary cultural perspective. It takes the form of a conceptual health program to encourage an abstract, aesthetic, humorous, and irreverent read of an extensive and earnest topic. This thesis is not concerned with making declarative statements or providing a diagnosis, but in creating situations that offer this subject as a complex and open-ended issue. Placed in the artist’s hands, health regimen and ritual become like Fluxus scores to be realized with poetic gesture, open to variation, and I encourage greater audience participation through its interpretation.