Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis provides a critical discussion of, and motivation for, my jewellery practice, in which fat from the human body is transformed into adornment. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s theory of ‘abjection’, this research scrutinises the grotesque status of body substances in the modern media, with the intention of changing viewer reactions to these substances from repulsion to aesthetic enjoyment. I consider the influence of popular culture, where idealised bodies are promoted as ‘better’ than non-normative body types, and then consider how (or whether) the abject remainders of the ‘ideal body’ can successfully be refigured as adornment. In order to situate my practical Masters work in the wider field of contemporary avant-garde jewellery practice, I study the work of select jewellers, who also refer to, or use, body substances in critical ways in their work. Through this, I hope to scrutinise both normative notions of the body and of jewellery as adornment. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis dien as ’n kritiese bespreking van en motivering vir my praktiese juwelierswareontwerp, waarin vet afkomstig van die menslike liggaam verander word in versiering. Die navorsing gebruik Julia Kristeva se teorie van ‘abjection’ om die groteske status wat liggaamstowwe in die moderne media het, uit te pluis, met die doel om die toeskouer se reaksie op hierdie stowwe van afkeer in estetiese genot te verander. Ek oorweeg die invloed van populêre kultuur waarbinne geïdealiseerde liggame as ‘beter’ as nie-normatiewe liggaamstipes aangebied word. Ek kyk verder na hoe (en of) die vernederende (‘abject’) oorblyfsels van die ‘ideale liggaam’ suksesvol as versiering omvorm kan word. Om my praktiese werk vir die Meestersgraad binne die wyer veld van kontemporêre avant-garde juwelierswarepraktyk te vestig, ondersoek ek ook werk van sekere juweliers wat ook liggaamstowwe in hulle werk gebruik, of daarna verwys. Hierdeur hoop ek om die normatiewe idees van beide die liggaam en juweliersware as versiering uit te pluis.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Arts Faculty (Fine Arts), 1999 / My basic premise in this study is, if abjection is a psychosocial phenomenon, even a kind of waste category and mechanism, it should be discernible and analysable as an underlying structure in the form, iconography and purpose of works of art. Certain modes of art will manifest or express it more lucidly and abundantly than others. Satire and the Grotesque, which Goya adopts in his graphic Work, are especially fruitful in this regard. In both, one can find processes and states of degradation and vitiation that accord with the two facets of abjection Hal Foster (1996) so pragmatically terms the operation to abject and the condition to be abject. Satire, with its inclination to criticise political, social and ecclesiastical figures, can chiefly be interpreted in terms of the operation to abject (to lower, cast down, depose, sideline), while the Grotesque, displaying the distorted, monstrous, 'freakish', hybrid, impossible, relates more to tire condition to be abject. This conjunction between satire/the Grotesque and abjection guides my interpretation of Los Caprichos and Los Disparates. Los Caprichos, in which Goya took it upon himself to "censure" and "ridicule" "human errors and vices", are marked by a quite strict use of satire to criticise, mock and marginalise certain social groups (prostitutes, nobles and corrupt clerics, in particular). Since society, or the Symbolic that undergirds it, cannot do without the abject, either in its role as midden or as oppositional determinant or defining other, the satirical project cannot banish or destroy the abject; it can, however, bid and lobby for some degree of social reclamation and rejuvenation. The satirist depicts the grotesque, sordid, obscene, deviant, abandoned and licentious to indicate to the viewer/reader what s/h e must laugh off to live a decent, obedient, constructive and law-fearing life. Goya takes this aapproach in Los Caprichos. After all, in at least one letter to his friend Martin Zapater he hinted that he feared the "witches, goblins, phantoms, arrogant giants, knaves" and "scoundrels" of his society, and evidently felt a need to part from them. How deep this need ran one cannot say; many of his images suggest a degree of equivocation (he vacillates between being on the side of the law and on the side of Ms own more incorruptible conscience, from which he upbraids the law) and ambivalence (on the one hand, he scolds his objects of attack and appears to be repelled by them; on the other, he seems to relish depicting them in grotesque and blighted shapes, as if the satirical purpose is secondary to the opportunity his art provides to invent forms and get close to the forbidden, the anti-social, the rotten, the abject). In Los Disparates equivocation and ambivalence come more to the fore. Goya often appears most aggressively satirical in the Disparates when he questions corruption in social institutions such as tire Church and the law. Some images, notably Folhj of the Mass, juxtapose a wrathful figure with a mass of social ills, foibles and depravities, and seem characteristically satirical, but the majority of the etchings are striking in their lack of closure, as if a "state of unresolved tension", to quote Michael Steig, adequately rewarded Goya for the labour of production. Man xoandering among Phantoms, for example, is ambiguous and seems to sum up Goya's relationsMp to the abject toward the end of his life: through the surrogate of an old man, Goya appears to have struck a deal with the abject; submerged in it, corrupted by it, impure, but nevertheless sufficiently single-minded to find an identity separate from it. Complicit, but differentiated: all subjects stand in this way to the abject. In Los Desastres, especially given that I do not deal with the Caprichos Enfdticos section of the series, my interpretation is determined less by satire than by the question of how an antagonistic nation uses war as a mechanism of conclusive abjection to extend military, political and, ultimately. Symbolic influence - by means of sanctioned murder, execution, even rape - over another nation, w ith the aim of making that nation succumb to the abjection of surrender and the imposition of a foreign Symbolic. War also produces heaps of corpses and, in the occupied cities, ill and starving destitutes: those reduced to conditions of permanent or near-permanent abjection by war's ballistic exacerbation of the operation to abject. Contact with abjection through art strengthens, weakens and expands the self. It carries the threat of immersion in the repressed and the promise of risque pleasure - both from the diminution of unpleasure through the making or viewing of art, and the more positive pleasure of jouissance. Contact with abjection allows, further, for the complicated experience of being liminal, grotesque and abject oneself while caught between the poles of the Symbolic and tire abject. Whether we, as makers an d /o r viewers, criticise or joy in it, abjection holds out the alluring prospect of catharsis and temporary relief both from its own hazards and the rigours and inhibitions of social life. Goya, it would appear, found this intervenient condition compelling enough to return to it - if he ever truly left it - over a period of almost three decades through the medium of the three graphic series I explore in this dissertation.

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis I investigate the radical reframing of maternal representation in the photographic series by Cape Town-based artist Svea Josephy (b. 1969), entitled Confinement 2005-ongoing. Using Julia Kristeva’s theorisation of the maternal body’s relation to abjection, as well as its imperative to the remodelling of the relationship between the corporeal and the cultural, I explore how Josephy’s images explicitly engage with the Kristevan abject in order to disrupt cultural inscriptions of maternity and ‘motherhood’. I contend that Confinement situates Josephy’s experience of ‘becoming-mother’ against the dominant discourses of maternity and birth, and thereby uses the maternal subject as a means to interrogate broader issues of gender and identity. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis ondersoek ek die radikale herberaming van die moederfiguur in Confinement (2005 tot op hede) – ‘n fotoreeks van die Kaapse kunstenaar Svea Josephy (geb. 1969). Julia Kristeva se teorieë oor die moederlike liggaam, en in besonder die moederliggaam se verhouding tot abjeksie, word aangewend om die verband tussen die liggaamlike en die kulturele te herbedink. Ek ondersoek hoe hierdie fotoreeks Kristeva se konsep van die abjekte benut, ten einde kulturele voorskriftelikheid oor moederskap en 'ma-wees' te ontwrig. Ek argumenteer dat Confinement Josephy se ondervinding van 'wordend-moederskap’ die dominante diskoerse van moederskap en geboorte uitdaag, en sodoende die moederlike subjek gebruik om breër aspekte rondom geslag en identiteit te bevraagteken.