We recently connected with Kiki Farish and have shared our conversation below.

Kiki, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Much of my work explores the emotional conflict I experience in repeated attempts to purge the patriarchal and religious constructs that govern my life and have influenced the lives of women throughout history. I seek to promote dialogue about the female body, female rights and our formal education concerning female reproductive systems.

I’ve painted door mats and naming them after pagan goddesses. The introduction of works on the floor, grounded and intentionally anti-monumental, exposes the habitual, complicit behavior of dominion over nature, women and girls. I often use the vulva as source material to reveal our culture’s faulty notions about women’s anatomy. The conception that the vulva is life giving, revered and unexploited plays out visually when related to the Virgin Mary in an internet image search of “St. Mary & vulva.” A taboo juxtaposition, yes, but I find the visual kinship humorous. I designed a stencil to illustrate this sensibility, one of the many layers pushing and pulling for attention in my work.

I am interested in the changing narratives that affect gender equality, the visual and verbal language we use to illustrate these narratives. There is power in naming. Responses to the question, “what do you call your external female body parts?” reveal a range of attitudes. For example, using the word “vagina,” when “vulva” is what we really mean, erases the body part that brings women the most pleasure and focuses on the female body part that brings men the most pleasure. It’s very subtle… say it with flowers.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the youngest of four, raised in sunny Jacksonville, Florida, during the 60s. I remember the shade of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the light of the women’s rights movement. After graduating from Meredith College, Raleigh, NC with a double major in Math and Art, I worked at SAS Institute, Inc. helping customers “turn raw data into information.” Raising two children with my husband, I then acquired an MFA from East Carolina University (ECU). I have taught at various NC degree granting institutions, including ECU and Meredith College. “I have always thought of extremes as being far apart but now realize, and build compositions to express, how extremely close they are.” A 2014-2015 N.C. Arts Council Fellowship recipient. I have received residencies at Jentel, New York Mills, Penland and also been awarded NC regional area project grants (1999, 2002, 2006, 2013).

My work has been exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC; and Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, NC. My work has been collected privately in such venues as Fidelity Investments and the Cities of Raleigh and Rocky Mount, NC.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I am visually recording a sense of place – a woman’s place. My record keeping is born out of awareness that allowing women to choose the course of their own lives goes deeply against a very old grain and women are constrained in a special way through control of their sexuality. The evidence is subtle in Western Society. This is not a sudden epiphany but my work wrestles and nestles with resolution through process. So, my recorded marks have moments of clarity, but there are many gray areas, lost edges, and ambiguities.

True to my southern upbringing, this record asserts influence in veiled ways. Using symbolic meanings and visual attributes of flowers, placement of text and emotional marks are elements that are meant to be read as fragments. My work is narrative and open ended for today’s audience. I went to Italy and saw fragmented frescos in the Bargello of Florence dating back to the 1200’s. There were missing parts of the images, lost through time; vibrancies and meanings spoke through muted colors. The broken images actually opened up the possibilities for interpretation. I was thrilled with the moments of clarity balanced with ambiguity. Everyday ordinary spaces are opportunities for unique responses. Driving in NC at twilight offers up color palettes and textures that are as fabulous as those frescos.

My intent is to draw the viewer in, capture attention and insist on more than a glance. To come into a narrative of abundance, collaboration and equality. The series, Marks of Misogyny are imagined worlds where the regeneration of the sacred feminine has the power to consult with earth’s nature and yes, even masculine nature as co-creatives. Permission is not necessary.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Our present culture’s value of sexual modesty limits our understanding of a woman’s right to sexual autonomy. Yet, Paleolithic statuettes with articulated vulva, small and easily carried, take no pains to hide their sexuality. The American female continues to be in the margins of the Constitution. As politicians continue to legislate the female body, advocacy of education on this subject is essential.

Before becoming sexually active, talking about the possibilities with my boyfriend made clear that he understood his body much better than I understood mine. Still as a teenager, this didn’t prompt my own discoveries because that wasn’t proper. It wasn’t until I was in my forties that I sought more knowledge about female anatomy.

Symbols represent ideas greater than the object itself and can be used to bring people to a common cause. America has more symbols than most countries. Inserting the vulva as a symbol brings pudenda into the vernacular. There is power in naming. Something that is not named, does not exist. The conception that the vulva is life giving, revered and unexploited should play out as a national treasure and be cared for. This is proper.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kikifarish.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiki.farish/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiki-farish-97097b11/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DutzG9mYDsw&feature=youtu.be