SHARI PHOENIX | Are you offended yet?
Shari Phoenix © All rights reserved.
Eve,” as she is represented by many male artists over the years, embodies the ideal image of a European woman and thus creates an entry point to examine ideas of beauty and perfection. However, as Mikhail Bakhtin theorizes, the Carnival becomes a free space to transform Eve’s image from her traditional representation. Eve’s physical form is recreated through deformity and defilement in the time of the carnivalesque using Caribbean carnival fashion and Grotesque realism. Utilizing the dualistic nature of the topsy turvy world of medieval Carnival, Eve and the costume transcends the ideas of societal beauty and perfection.
Shari Phoenix © All rights reserved.
While embodying her own dualistic qualities in which she is perfect and became flawed due to the fall of man, the costume occupies the middle ground between Eve’s dualism.
The costume is made of recycled material to emphasize the imperfection of the recreated form. The recreated body references womanhood, motherhood, and Caribbean tropical flora and fauna as the Garden of Eden.
The story of Adam and Eve is referred to within the entirety of my work with a distinct focus on Eve. The figure Adam becomes a prop, a part of the background that acts as a reference or becomes the male gaze’s embodiment. A figure which is to be destroyed or ignored before we celebrate the liberation of the female body.
Shari Phoenix is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Barbados. She completed her Associate’s degree in visual art in 2016 and her Bachelor’s in fine arts at the Barbados community college.
Phoenix’s work deconstructs and interrogates ideas of beauty and perfection as it has been historically presented through detailed watercolor paintings and grotesque costume making and designs.
Phoenix has been involved in a few local exhibitions and exhibited internationally at Miami’s Prizm art fair in 2020. She has also worked with international artist Philippe Dodard in 2017 on the National Cultural Foundation’s Mural Project at its headquarters.
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