Emily Vaughn

presents

"Emiri senseiiii? Where is bikini artitsu? ‘She went to live with tupac in the great big rap bowl in the sky’"

-Hiroko Azuse

“Exposure”

 

While the original Artist Statement for “The Bikini Artist Project” holds true, I feel the need to embellish on what two years of Bikini Art has taught me. I want to share with what, I feel, is a wealth of experience, trial and error, and social experiment.

While at its heart, The Bikini Artist project remains a humorous endeavor, it has evolved in a personal movement, a symbol focused on the eternal struggle to expose.

Exposure—of the body, of the female form—my female form. Exposure of the hypocrisies we (still) abide by, everyday, to some extent. Exposure of my own worst nightmares, insecurities, and disabilities. Only thought the abject display of my alter ego can I hope to accomplish the candor and honesty that I feel is necessary to solve these problems.

It has been suggested (jokingly, I hope) that without my alter ego, I might go mad-- That is it hard to define the line between the Bikini Artist and the woman that invented her. What are we, if not invented creatures? In this way, I see the Bikini Artist Project as a response to a larger cultural autism. There are faces we all invent to communicate with the world—be it a ridiculous archetype of femininity, or a carefully constructed social etiquette, alien one’s own mind.

I hope to excite my audience—both sexually and cerebrally. The two have been intimately connected, in my mind, and I feel this connection to represent a healthy, youthful approach to the world. While my identities as the Bikini Artist and as Emily Vaughn do remain distinct and differential, I hope my viewer will be engaged by both; we cannot ponder Adam without first questioning God.

 

Artist's Statement

The Bikini Artist Project features me, instructing and informing the audience in the history and methodologies of modern art. On the surface level, I will walk the viewer through the process of creating a painting, ala Bob Ross. The monologue will focus on modernist art history, and educate the viewer to the theories and influences behind these artistic movements. Emily, the artist/host, is a nubile young woman in a bikini. Along with the obvious attention grabbing sexual connotations, a woman artist in this position would give the show an appeal of strangeness; it is meant to seem mildly degrading and to exploit the female body for entertainment purposes. The show will provide a platform to address the relationships between art, the female body, and the media.

The Bikini Artist Project is an ongoing process, a persona I adopt in order to create the spectacle of the television show. By creating a video that may be exhibited, and creating propaganda to surround the show, I intend the piece to create its own artistic sphere. Images of sexualized women are everywhere in art and advertising. In order to “sell” art to the TV watching populace, one must seize the images that have already been in circulation for years, and revamp them in a way that will eventually lead to the realization of what the show actually is; an art piece.

The idea for the Bikini Artist Project originated in my personal experience. An acquaintance once told me that I painted so quickly, that I should have on of those Bob-Ross type shows. I jokingly responded that I would have to be wearing a bikini for anyone to be interested in that today.