Artist of the Month

Anne Polashenski

In her work, Anne Polashenski weaves together intricate and bold patterns that delight the eye while confronting gender, feminism, and tradition. In this way, she breaks down preconceived boundaries limiting textile and design as superficial by addressing issues that carry heavy psychological and emotional weight. Polashenski also incorporates unexpected materials including rubber stamps and photography into her collages, adding a whimsical quality to these works while making them even more visually complex.

For one of her most recent series, Turkish Delight, Polashenski has taken inspiration from the rich and ornate textiles of the Ottoman sultans. While there is a long and well recorded history of these regal garments, including an entire museum dedicated to their preservation, there is little record of what the women of the court wore. Thus, in such works as Turkish Delight: Çintamani Obliteration (2008), Polashenski has ennobled her female model by dressing her in an elaborate kaftan, but has simultaneously “obliterated” her identity by drowning her in the waves of pattern, creating complex layers of meaning.

Image Turkish Delight: Çintamani Obliteration, 2008, 16 x 16 inches, C-print and gouache on paper.

Her other current series, Flimflam, is decidedly more humorous in tone, but still alludes to similar issues. In Murad III in Lacey Dress Mannequin Flimflam (2009), Polashenski has employed a purple lacy mannequin as her centerpiece, including decorative breasts. On top of the bodice, she has placed the rubber stamped head of Ottoman sultan Murad III. His stern expression and oversized head highlight the absurdity of this juxtaposition. At the same time, Polaskenski distorts various standards of male supremacy, as Murad was perhaps best known as the ruler who had his five brothers strangled to take control of the throne. Furthermore, Surrealist artists often used dismembered female parts and bodices in their work, objectifying the female body. In this way, Polashenski’s work is at once playful and critical, questioning generations of cultural hegemony.

Artist Statement

My current work incorporates textile patterns and photographs of figures in patterned clothing. The painted and collaged patterns act as a form of camouflage to hide and protect the body. These detailed patterned spaces are often psychologically charged, dealing with issues of control, power, entrapment and escape.

Image Murad III in Lacey Dress Mannequin Flimflam, 2009, 9 x 7 1/2 inches, rubber stamp ink images and gouache on paper.

Turkish Delight is a new series of elaborate mixed media works that portray women dressed in Turkish Kaftans that are visually obliterated by the painted textile patterns. Traditionally, only Ottoman Sultans wore these elaborate robes; some were so precious that they were given as rewards to important generals or dignitaries. I am interested in addressing the status and gender of dress from this culture from a modern day western perspective, where a long dress is never clothing that an important male figure would embrace. The Turkish Delight paintings give power to the women dressed in the Imperial Kaftans, but as the title also suggests the women are objectified as candy or as eye candy – a role that women confront everyday in almost all cultures.

In a more humorous series of work titled Flimflams, I use an eclectic range of rubber-stamp images that interact with the painted patterns. A combination of rubber-stamp images (some found and some created from my drawings) are used to emphasize the ideas of the Turkish Delight paintings. These pieces move further into the realm of fantasy and absurdity than with other works. The stamps are carefully selected to create a series of paintings that are unrestrained by pictorial reality, but structured around the patterns, forming ambiguous narratives and suggesting a new set of cultural associations for the chosen patterns. Some of the scenarios depicted in these paintings include: Ottoman Sultans (whose kaftans are used in my Turkish Delight series) dressed in female garb, as their kaftans are now unavailable for their use; Sultans who interact with characters from different cultures and time periods; and a veiled woman surrounded by mountains of Turkish Delight.

About the Artist

Polashenski earned a B.A. in painting and printmaking from SUNY Plattsburgh State University in 1998 and an MFA in studio art and combined media from Hunter College. In addition to her individual work, she is a founding member of the Brainstormers, a collective of four artists founded in March, 2005 that demands discussion of gender inequity and power structure in the art world through performance. Brainstormers has performed at P.S. 1, the Armory Show, and the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum among other venues.

Image Turkish Tunic Obliteration, 2008, 21 x 18 inches, C-print and gouache on paper.

Written by Carolyn Yates, BRIC Contemporary Art Intern