Student Story: Virginia Barrantes Fernandez

OCA Creative Arts

I am Venus

My practice explores how women and AFAB artists reclaim bodily agency through material, narrative and form. In my practice, I expose the violence embedded in idealised femininity, using humour, materiality, identity, feminist resistance, and objects to mediate trauma.

In my biographic retelling I am Venus, I  extend this concept through the use of reclaimed objects and fragmented storytelling to articulate vulnerability, fragility, resilience, and the lived impact of medical abuse through my experience with living with endometriosis and adenomyosis.

In creating this work, I embodied the experience of Venus, a woman confined to a medical institution who longs to tell her story. The piece draws on the spirit of Outsider Art and the philosophical framework of Phenomenology, giving voice to someone whose circumstances and background limit her access to skills, resources and freedom.

The book itself is crafted from discarded medical materials and waste, reflecting the constraints of Venus’s life. To further recreate the phenomenological experience of restriction, I imposed similar constraints on my own process. I worked with limited supplies and, at times, locked myself in my studio while making the book to evoke a sense of confinement.

By using discarded birth control pills, my work expresses feminist resistance and embodiment, acknowledging the influence of artists such as Marian Elliot-Said, Judy Clark and Agnes Richter.

The narrative structure draws on the fragmented storytelling techniques of Caroline Preston and Graham Rawle, bringing together visual and textual elements while incorporating real-world objects into the fiction, blurring the line between reality and invention and giving the story greater power and authenticity.

This work is available to fully view and download for free here:

Itch.Io

The Internet Archive

Virginia Barrantes Fernandez

BA Creative Arts Stage 2 Student.