ROY presents: Janelle Bonfour-Mikes
The Blue Wallpaper & Other Stories
My current body of work, The Blue Wallpaper (2021) is a cross-disciplinary episodic series consisting of photographs, human hair, cyanotype, and performance. The common thread amongst these 10 pieces is time and the body. I’ve always been interested in time/4th dimension and living through this pandemic has only heightened my interest and awareness of time. At the beginning of the lockdown in Spring 2020 I set out to create a body of work about the many facets of time. We experience time in a variety of ways and I’ve chosen to look at how our bodies experience time, how we can mark time, and what we do with the time. Our bodies decay, our hair grows, the sun exists, and we find things to do. In Pomegranates & the Decay of My Fertility #1-6 and The Outpouring I consider how time affects our bodies. From ageing and fertility to slightly greying hair, I became acutely aware of things I hadn’t really given a second thought to prior to March 2020. I also began to really notice time and was on a quest to figure out how to mark the days. Those days all felt the same. It was monotonous. The sameness was obvious, but where was the difference? They had to be different. Each day couldn’t be the same. In The Blue Wallpaper I chose to use cyanotype because it is exposed through the sun and I was able to capture a snapshot of each day and to really see the small differences in the sun’s brightness and position. That gave me faith that I wasn’t merely in a time loop. And then finally, what was I doing with my time? Well, I took a ton of bubble baths and washed my hair a lot. Toiling Away and Dregs are (re)presentations of an activity that I did fairly frequently. In the pieces where my figure isn’t present I’ve used my hair as a metonym for the body. In The Blue Wallpaper I used my hair as a contact negative to produce the print and thus, I am present in each of these pieces. In this exhibition I hope to communicate the beauty in the banality of existence that we all felt.
ROY asks
1. What is your name and preferred pronouns?
Janelle Bonfour-Mikes, she/her/hers
2. How has art (whether it be your own or art in general) changed you?
Gosh, this is a difficult question for me. I think as I’ve gotten older, art (both my practice and art in general) has caused me to constantly look at the world differently. I’m always trying to notice the smallest detail and to find the beauty in the most banal event. My own practice has taught me resilience and to not rely on outside forces to determine my self-worth. Artists experience a lot of rejection which is difficult mentally and emotionally. In order to survive in this industry (and in life) I’ve realized that I can’t let rejection and others’ opinions about me or my work deter me from making or cause me to devalue my existence.
3. How did you start your artistic practice?
I don't remember a time when I wasn’t making art. I was incredibly clumsy as a child (my family’s nickname for me for awhile was Grace because I had none) and my mom put me in dance class at 4 and I started making my own dances when I was kindergarten. For a “what do you want to be when you grow up” assignment in 1st grade I remember being adamant about wanting to be a choreographer. My mediums have evolved and shifted, but I’ve always made art. I did the dance thing for awhile (and on occasion still make ‘dances’) During my time in the MFA program at CCAD I really began to make work that blurs the line between the visual and the performative.
4. When a first-time viewer sees your work, what is the first word that you hope they think when looking at it?
My goodness, this is another difficult question. Rather than think in words, I often think in feelings or visceral reactions. My hope is that a first-time viewer feels something in their gut (whether that be disgust, repulsion, sorrow, or joy doesn’t matter to me). I want to inspire a reaction in people’s bodies.