Defense Date

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Painting and Printmaking

First Advisor

Cara Benedetto

Second Advisor

Hilary Wilder

Third Advisor

Noah Simblist

Fourth Advisor

Alexander Zohore

Abstract

Shinners is a project that aims to examine the position of women in subcultures and capture conversations of women in subcultural sports. Within feminism, sociological constructs, campy horror, and personal experience I am manifesting the physical and mental obstacles faced in the subcultural sport of Bicycle Motocross (BMX) through photography, painting, collage, video, and sculpture. I interpret images posted to social media of injuries obtained while riding BMX as forms of empowerment, bodily gore as extreme evidence of participation, performative violence, valorizing the understanding of both the physical and psychological pain of failure, and the use of failure as a measure of success, empathy, and breaking paradigms. The literal scars depicted are battle wounds that I like to call “blood trophies”. The collected images are both found and donated by women in the BMX community. The work aims to open and continue the conversations surrounding women in subcultures in hopes that Shinners will further contextualize the anxiety, theatricality, and thrill, of finding community, pleasure, and strength through pain.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

5-2-2024

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