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Boys Own: Photography of Menika van der Poorten

by theertha_ak — last modified 2008-11-11 11:25

Menika van der Poorten exhibition was held from 9th to 26th November 2008 at the Red Dot Gallery, Ethul Kotte, Sri Lanka.

Curator's Note

Boys Own
Photograpy of Menika van der Poorten

by Anoli Perera

Boys Own is a delicate photographic recording of adolescence through the eyes of an artist, a mother and a woman. In this attempt, she looks into two interrelated realms: the realm of homo-social behavior where masculinities get formed and manifested in male children and the sensitive and often emotional realization of ‘sons growing up’.

The exhibition consists of a series of solo portraits of youth between 10 to 16 years. Another series of images tries to capture the ‘somewhat intense gestures’ of boys towards other boys, reflections of bonding rituals of the forming masculinities. Both these series of works show intimately the anxieties, uncertainties and restlessness of adolescence through the eyes of another who is in close proximity witnessing the changes and the ‘growing pains’ of a group of boys. The whole series revolves around the artist’s sons, their friends and acquaintances. Sometimes voyeuristically, sometimes as an inquisitive mother intrigued by the changes in her boys manifested physically, psychologically and gesturally, van der Poorten engages with her subject matter trying to find her own foothold in their tumultuous and transient passage to this world of the masculine. “Not only are my sons constantly growing and going through profound changes but I also find myself changing in the way I relate/react to them and it’s a personally challenging journey in a way nothing else in my life has been. It’s a universal experience but also very personal.” Therefore, what is represented here are not only the anxieties of the characters centrally represented in the exhibited works but also of the artist, the author of the photographs. This makes the artist a ghost character whose emotions are somehow present but with a bodily absence in the work. In many ways this leaves both the object of the art work as well as the artist/gazer on an equal level transcending the usual hierarchies present in artist/ model situations within the historical discourse of visual arts.

Getting into the thematic content and looking more closely at the artist’s own anxieties as an inherent part of the work, it reminds me of Michael S. Kimmel’s essay Masculinity as Homophobia from which I would like to quote the following:

"Historically and developmentally, masculinity has been defined as the flight from women, a repudiation of femininity. Since Freud, we have come to understand that developmentally the central task that every little boy must confront is to develop a secure identity for himself as a man. As Freud had it, the oedipal project is a process of the boy’s renouncing his identification with a deep emotional attachment to his mother and then replacing her with the father as the object of identification".

While the Freudian perception outlined above on the construction of masculinities and femininities have been significantly questioned through recent feminist critical interventions what is obvious is that adolescence is one of the first visible rebellions against the authority, particularly of the mother as she is the comfort zone, that constant and overwhelming presence engaging in checks and balances in the lives of children. Perhaps the artist’s attraction and the engagement with the subject is precisely to deal with this first cracks of breaking away which she experiences with her own two sons. Close observations, analyzing and theorizing always brings in a sense of aloofness and a clinical distance to the object of study. In that sense, noting her own personal involvement and proximity to the subject and the objects of study, Van der Poorten’s attempt in this series of work tends to be a two way mirror that reflects an emotional stance on one side and a sense of clinical aloofness as a strategy that equalize those emotions on the other.

Kimmel further discusses the masculine identity as a homo-social activity that comes into being “in the renunciation of femininity, not in the direct affirmation of masculine, which leaves the masculine identity tenuous and fragile.” Van der Poorten clearly recognizes the fragility in these adolescent bodies which she has cleverly and craftily captured through various subtle mannerisms and moods of the young models in her work. She observes that “it’s more tough for boys to be masculine than women to be feminine. For women being non feminine is not exactly such an issue. The little girls being tomboys were never a cause for alarm. Negotiating both ‘girlish’ and ‘tomboyish’ behaviors in the same instance is easily done by them which in many senses give girls more space to negotiate their adult identities as women. But boys have to constantly reaffirm their boyishness within their peer groups so as not to be called ‘girly.’ One wonders if this constant reaffirmation of masculinity gives that particular aggressive temperament in the bonding behavior among adolescent boys. Van der Pooten’s Boys Own represents an attempt that demands the viewer to go beyond the realms of aesthetic and artistic interpretations.

Menika van der Poorten has been involved in the field of photography for over 20 years as a photographer, picture researcher, teacher, arts administrator and editor both in Sri Lanka and in England. The overall tendency in her work has been to venture into personal stories, private spaces and childhood moments. Her series of works titled ‘Last Doll’ and ‘Dream Time’ unveils a psycho drama which is layered and carries many meanings. In her work ‘Dream Time,’ the temporality gets fluid and loses its sense of location and space while projecting a transient mood without a clearly identified beginning or an end due to lack of any demarcation. In these works she looks at her own family history and reconstructs a memory book as a psychological play with a sense of nostalgia:

"Memory, personal histories, space, time, the transient, the fragmentary, ephemeral and the mundane bits of life are my inspiration…" (van der Poorten 2006).

With the practices of art that were established by the ‘90s Trend’, a liberated space for artistic expression allowed contemporary women artists to emerge and establish their art practices that were informed by discourse dealing with identity and gender politics. In this context, one could see women artists engaged in a number of thematic tendencies dealing with identity and sexuality using a methodology of investigating intimate experiences and interrogation of self and gender tensions through reworking of topographical elements from one’s own personal histories. Menika van der Poorten’s art practice as a photographer reflects this particular tendency.

Van der Poorten received her photographic education at the John Cass School, London and University of Westminster, UK. She has been engaged in freelance teaching at the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, Overseas School of Colombo, and the Colombo Academy of Design. She is also a board member of Theertha International Artists Collective. She received the Bunka Award 2008 given for special achievement in photography by the Japan Sri Lanka Friendship Fund. At present, van der Poorten lives and works in Sri Lanka, and can be identified as one of the very few photographers who engages in art photography.

(The above essay is published in the Boys Own exhibition catalog. Publication date & place: November 2008, Ethul Kotte. Published by Theertha Red Dot Gallery).