Hello adventurers,
Let me take you on a trip through a time machine, and tell you the story of my biggest project to date. My time at MassArt was transformative to say the least, and it gave me the opportunity to explore my true passions and intentions as an artist. My Senior Thesis project in 2016 was the culmination of this exploration, and through it I discovered that my love of visual storytelling was a central aspect of my identity as an artist.
In the semesters leading up to this installation, I had crafted a disjointed collection of pieces for various assignments. I kept having an underlying feeling that they belonged together, in the same narrative, so I decided to spend my last few months crafting an alternate world for them to exist in. I let them tell me the story of a woman who went from Queen to Outcast to Warrior, and from that came warring civilizations, coded alphabets, and countless elements of symbolism.
Elfleda was her name. And if you were one of the patient ones to decode all of the writing along the way, you could learn more about her story and life...
She was born into the highest royal family of a grand walled city, and grew up learning how to be a proper Queen. She took to her teachings well, and always listened to the Council of Elders. She was quite content with her upscale life until a raven flew through her window with a letter from someone claiming to be her long-lost sister. This letter warned Elfleda of horrible corruption in the Council, and described a very different life for those who had been cast out from the city, or left to rot in the slums. At first, she took no notice of it, but slowly it began to eat away at her preconceived notions...
Eventually, Elfleda asked too many questions, and was ultimately cast out from her home on false charges. The notice of her banishment was left nailed to the wall of her room.
It is here that we walk through the curtained doorway, into the Banishment Room. My dear friend Melissa acted as this character in this transformative moment of her story. As you walk in, you see her stripped of her gown, her name, and thrown in the coals. She was distraught, defeated, and had no way of fending for herself. Throughout the full 2 hours of the show’s opening ceremony, you could stand in the Banishment Room and watch the nameless woman slowly start to drag herself across the room, finding it in herself to fight. She makes a blanket out of her ripped skirt, she makes tools out of the metal in her burnt corset, and she fashions a weapon out of a fallen branch. At the end, she is standing proud, and has left behind a charcoal trail of prints that tell the story of her struggle.
When we turn left, we see an alter-like setting of the tools and home she built for herself in the wilderness. By transcribing the note written on leather, we learn that she found her sister and an entire village of outcasts, driven out from this walled city for advocating a just leadership. Together, the two sisters lead the group to wage war on the Council, and after many successful raids, the Nameless Woman is named Fennix, Chief of the Outlaws.
I hope you all enjoyed reading about the story and the concept sketches from this huge project! I truly hope that someday I'll be able to revisit the experience of creating large-scale story-based installations, but in the meantime, I get the same amount of loving energy from crafting personalized pieces that tell the story of my customers.
Have any questions about the world I created, or the life of our heroin? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time,
Marin