Alena Turner BFA Thesis Fall 2008
The desire to exchange yourself with another’s self is fraught with anxiety. Such exchanges are as fragile and ephemeral as a vapor in flux, disappearing and reappearing dependent upon time and circumstance. Distances still exist, in spite of one’s attempt to fuse with a lover, and yet, the effort is never abandoned. In an amorous relationship, anxieties often manifest psychologically, and seem more forceful than even the exchange of love that provoked it in the first place. My work acknowledges a lover’s anxieties through means of perception and interpretation. I have explored five separate stages of apprehension in an amorous relationship. Each individual piece interprets a fragment from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. I gravitated toward Barthes’ book because it delineates the “figures of love,” it’s subtle forms and clandestine signs, with great intelligibility and rigor. Amplifying Barthes’ methodology, my work portrays a perspective on the subject of love through the poetics of simplicity and minimal form.