Areeba Kash
Exploring identity creation, my practice implements textiles and photography to investigate how femininity is materialised through social norms, and question what is innate versus what is manufactured.
Exploring the creation of feminine identities, my practice utilises animal imagery and textiles to look at the expectations that restrain femininity and deny it’s multiplicity. The use of animal imagery allows me to explore the influence of culture on gender and to question what is innate versus what is manufactured. By looking at it through a child-like point of view, I explore how turning femininity into an act of play allows for more fluidity within it. My work has an impulsively made, hand-crafted and unpolished quality, to speak to the liveliness in the act of creation of identity.
My degree show piece consists of photograph and film, alongside textile pieces. Masks, created from cardboard and fabric speak to ideas around performance and play, and their use in film and photography pieces help highlight the narratives within my work. Through looking at traditional crafts and intertwining them with more contemporary mediums and imagery, I explore the expectations around ‘traditional’ feminine behaviours, their relevance in our current society, and how they can be repurposed to express a truer representation of femininity.
