The primary objective of this creative project was the exploration of cultural and self identity and the painting techniques used for their creation. The paintings are an attempt to portray through the use of the human figure and symbolic elements to communicate my personal struggle relating to events in my past, present, and future. In these three large paintings I have explored an approach reminiscent to German Expressionism style along with more contemporary motifs which are derived from my research and past experiences in painting at Ball State University. It was very important for me to spend time researching artist involved in the German expressionist movement, because they have been an integral part of reshaping the way I approach art. This body of work required a variety of traditional oil painting techniques including: canvas construction, under painting, stumbling, and glazing. / Department of Art

The focus of this project is a creative investigation of the significance and function of the alter-ego in contemporary visual art, specifically in relation to sculpture, installation and video. / Artists, including myself, frequently develop characters or different personalities in and through their work in order to present an alternate, idealised or transformed self or as a tactic to investigate a different approach to their practice. These alternative constructed selves can function in diverse ways, often as a strategy for transgression, dispensing with accountability and/or for maintaining the freedoms and possibilities of a mutable identity. / Central to my research has been the development of a body of artefacts and texts that are made through, about or in response to a variety of my own alter-egos. Initially I inhabited three discrete alter-egos that were variations of myself, as an artist, in order to be able to observe and compare how they might operate and form an intra-subjective discourse. These version 'excursions', being Winifred, Edith and Sadie, can be more accurately described as semi-alter-egos because although the personalities are not entirely mine they are not different from mine they are not different from but simply 'mutilations' of my personality. They were initially outlined as Edith the struggling, self-effacing but creative loser, Winifred the straight faced, repressed, serious investigator brimming with curiosity and Sadie the successful, relaxed and happy self-enhancer for whom art and life flow. / The alter-egos evolved through changes of my appearance, behaviour and biographical data. Evidence of this approach is manifest through the amassing of fragments of images, artworks, video and photo documentation. The conception of Winifred, Edith and Sadie as artists allowed me to ground my activities in the studio around objects and materials through a project that was essentially a process. A critique of the art world is implied through the various strategies and responses of the alter-egos. The process eventually involved killing off these particular personae to more fully engage with questions of 'becoming' through a less contrived more unknowing approach to emerging alter-egos. / The artefacts were not conceived as an 'exhibition' but are residue of the research process and constitute the greater part of my thesis. The written exegesis elucidates the line of research undertaken within the studio practice with reference to personal perspectives and contemporary conceptions of the self. The exegesis also documents an exploration into the device and use of the alter-ego in recent visual arts practice and analyses how these constructed selves might permit, reveal, conceal or operate as projections of inner states or fulfilments of desire. My studio experiments and construction of artefacts have been informed by critical analysis of these functions and the ways in which they related or diverged from my own motivation and utilisation of the alter-ego. I briefly consider the area which includes abnormal psychological conditions such as the multiple personality and the splitting of the subject. / This project deals with complex philosophical issues without foregrounding a theoretical approach. The emphasis is on the generative potential through studio-based research in the area of visual arts. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2007.

What is belonging? What does belonging mean as lived experience? What happens when displacement disrupts belonging as solid given? / I investigate these questions from my unstable position as displaced cultural 'other', as artist, as woman and as city dweller. Personal memories, dreams and the experience of reality form threads of reference that are akin to Walter Benjamin's notion of memoirs, rather than being an autobiographical chronology. / I question how a sense of belonging may be instilled, maintained, lost, achieved, resisted; how a sense of otherness may develop, persist, (re)surface. Do migrants merely amplify a universal dilemma? My position as migrant is a complex interweaving of presence and absence, developed gradually over time as a result of a wide range of factors, including the abiding effect of early childhood experiences. I focus on geography and language as central to the experience of cultural displacement and move between ambivalent positions and the seemingly solid territories of authoritative theories. / The structure of the thesis reflects these complexities. It is a psychogeographical mapping of several journeys in one, like a Deleuzian rhizome route system, or Debordian dérive, or what Jean-Luc Nancy calls a mêlée. As methodology I draw on these theories to bring together complexities, by interweaving experience, practice and theory. / The thesis comprises art works and a written exegesis. Drawings, photos, maps and other artwork intersperse with writing; artefacts include text, maps, knitting and series of images that document walking projects. I link walking to uttering, to language and the telling of stories. I explore the complex dilemmas of translation, of language as loss, contained as interiority and language as appropriated, claimed from without. Both exegesis and studio work form part of a process that is expressive, while situated within a critical context. / I argue the validity of ambivalent belonging, formed and maintained in transient connections between fragmented aspects of experience, while keeping open the potentiality of ongoing change. This research into the meaning of belonging is full of intuitive beginnings and remains open ended. / Thesis (PhDVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2005.

Thesis (M.V.A.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 26 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the Sydney College of the Arts. Includes a list of illustrations: leaves 5-6. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 30).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

O presente trabalho consiste num esforço de aproximação entre literatura e psicologia que procurou manter a integridade de ambas as pontas do diálogo. O objetivo foi estudar o romance Crime e castigo de Dostoiévski, com foco na análise do protagonista, Rodion Raskólnikov. Para uma satisfatória compreensão da construção da subjetividade deste personagem fez-se necessário visualizá-lo em suas relações intersubjetivas. Assim, a análise foi estruturada em capítulos, cada qual destacando o diálogo entre duas \"vozes\", a do protagonista e a de outra personagem para que fossem explicitadas as contradições e implicações deste diálogo no processo de autoconsciência de Raskólnikov. Foram analisadas as relações do protagonista com Marmieládov, Razumíkhin, Lújin, Porfíri, Svidrigálov e Sônia. Além disso, foram tecidas considerações acerca do epílogo, considerando suas particularidades formais e funcionais em relação ao restante do romance. A entrada da psicologia está na tentativa de reconstituição do efeito estético do romance a partir da estruturação poética do texto, de modo que o protagonista seja considerado em sua ficcionalidade, e não como paciente da clínica psicológica, conforme os pressupostos teóricometodológicos da psicologia da arte de Vigotski. Para compreensão da organização formal do texto lançou-se mão da teoria polifônica de Bakhtin, bem como de outros autores da eslavística, mais ou menos congruentes a essa visão. Por fim, são apresentadas, em anexo, traduções de cinco textos da eslavística norte-americana e inglesa, todos precedidos por uma nota introdutória sobre os textos e seus autores. / This dissertation consists of an effort of bringing together literature and psychology, which tries to keep the integrity of both areas. The objective was to study Dostoevsky\'s novel Crime and Punishment, with an analysis of its main character, Rodion Raskolnikov. For a satisfying understanding of the construction of this character\'s subjectivity it was necessary to visualize him in his intersubjective relations. Thus, the analysis was structured in chapters, in which we underlined the dialogue between two \"voices\", the protagonist\'s and another character\'s, so that we could explicit the contradictions and implications of this dialogue in the selfconscience process of Raskolnikov. The relations of the protagonist with Marmeladov, Razumikhin, Luzhin, Porfiri, Svidrigailov and Sonia were analyzed. Besides, some notes were taken on the epilogue, considering its formal and functional particularities. The psychological goal rests in the attempt of reconstituting the novel\'s aesthetic effect through the understanding of its poetic structure, so that the protagonist is considered in his fictiousness and not as a patient in the psychological office, according to the theoretical-methodological presuppositions of Vygotsky\'s psychology of art. For an understanding of the formal organization of the text, we resorted to Bakhtin\'s polyphonic theory, as well as to other slavistic authors more or less congruent to this view. Finally, Portuguese translations of five texts from the American and British slavistics were presented and preceded by an introductory note on the texts and its authors.

Este estudo objetiva narrar uma história de obras produzidas por membros das classes populares, reconhecidas por meio de sua individualidade e inventividade, enfocando sua produção e sua recepção no Brasil, entre 1880 e 1990. A abordagem estética e histórica orientada pela fenomenologia foi realizada segundo o método micro-histórico, conduzido pela idéia de \"primitivo\". Os fragmentos das biografias e as imagens evocadas foram cruzados com os discursos de seus intérpretes que formularam designações como: \"arte primitiva\", \"arte psicopatológica\", \"arte bruta\", \"outsider art\", \"arte virgem\" e \"arte incomum\". No horizonte histórico da cultura brasileira abriram-se duas vias principais de interpretação: uma derivada do cientificismo do discurso psiquiátrico e outra do romantismo do discurso acerca da cultura popular. Não obstante a contribuição da noção francesa de Art Brut para questionar essas duas vias, a complexidade da produção artística brasileira solicita uma análise particular que revele o \"primitivo\" em suas ambigüidades / This study aims to narrate a history of art works produced by members of popular classes, recognized by its individuality and inventivety, focusing in the production and reception in Brazil between 1880 and 1990. The aesthetic and historic approaches was oriented by phenomenology followed the micro-historic method, guided by the idea of \"primitive\". The fragments of the biographies and evoked images were crossed with the discourse of its interpreters, that proposed designations as such: \"primitive art\", \"psychopathological art\", \"art brut\", \"outsider art\", \"uncommon art\" and \"virginal art\". In the historical context of the Brazilian culture two principal ways of interpretation were opened: one of them is derivated from the scientificism of the psychiatric discourse and the other from the romantic discourse about the popular culture. Nevertheless the contribution of the french notion of Art Brut to question these ways, the complexity of the Brazilian artistic production impose a particular analyses that reveals the \"primitive\" in its ambiguity

Da totalidade da produção vygotskiana sobre arte, há duas obras editadas e traduzidas para vários idiomas: o ensaio sobre Hamlet, A tragédia de Hamlet, príncipe da Dinamarca, de 1915-6, e Psicologia da arte, de 1925. Ambas foram editadas em russo em um mesmo volume somente em 1965. Entre elas, há uma intensa produção do autor como crítico teatral e literário, que até muito pouco tempo constava apenas de listagens de bibliografias e era inédita mesmo em russo. Assim, o objetivo da presente tese é contribuir para a superação dessa importante lacuna na divulgação da obra inicial de Vygotski (entre 1915 e 1926). O corpus investigado compreende um vasto conjunto de resenhas e artigos, principalmente sobre literatura e teatro, além de uma breve incursão no campo das artes plásticas. A partir do levantamento e exame dessa produção, foi feita a tradução diretamente do russo de uma seleção de textos inéditos em português. Esse material foi agrupado temática e cronologicamente em oito eixos: 1) teatro e revolução; 2) crítica literária; 3) crítica teatral sobre a Companhia Solovtsóv; 4) crítica teatral sobre o teatro judaico de Rubin; 5) crítica teatral balanço; 6) dança; 7) teatro infantil; 8) artes plásticas. A tese está dividida em dois blocos principais: no primeiro deles são comentadas as produções do Vygotski conhecido (A tragédia de Hamlet, príncipe da Dinamarca e Psicologia da arte), ao passo que o segundo é dedicado ao comentário sobre os textos inéditos selecionados, cujas traduções são apresentadas em anexo. O Vygótski-crítico que conhecemos a partir do material estudado é alguém com grande sensibilidade estética e também um militante pelo desenvolvimento de uma cena de qualidade nos palcos provincianos. Sua perspectiva sobre a arte busca superar tanto o reducionismo de uma tendência estritamente formal quanto da estética marxista vulgar. / From all Vygotsky\'s works on art, two of them were edited and translated into several languages: the essay on Hamlet from 1915-6 and Psychology of art, from 1925. Both came to light in Russian in a single edition only in 1965. Between them, the author has produced extensively as a theatrical and literary critic. This production has appeared only in bibliographical listings, but remained, until very short ago, unpublished even in Russian. Thus, the objective of the present thesis is to contribute to overcome this gap in the divulgation of Vygotsky\'s initial work (1915-1926). The investigated corpus comprises a vast number of reviews and articles, mainly on literature and theater, plus a brief incursion in the field of plastic arts. From the survey and exam of this production, a selection of texts previously unpublished in Portuguese was translated directly from Russian. This material was thematically and chronologically grouped in eight axes: 1) theater and revolution; 2) literary criticism; 3) theatrical criticism on Solovtsov troupe; 4) theatrical criticism on Rubins Jewish theater; 5) theatrical criticism overview; 6) dance; 7) children\'s theater; 8) plastic arts. The thesis is divided in two main parts: the first is dedicated to the production of the known Vygotsky (essay on Hamlet and Psychology of art), while the second provides comments on the selected unpublished texts, whose translations are presented in the appendix. The Vygotsky-critic that we get to know from the examined material is someone with great aesthetical sensibility and a militant for the development of a qualified scene in the provincial stage. His perspective on art seeks to overcome the reductionism of a strictly formal approach as well as vulgar Marxist aesthetics.

O presente trabalho consiste num esforço de aproximação entre literatura e psicologia que procurou manter a integridade de ambas as pontas do diálogo. O objetivo foi estudar o romance Crime e castigo de Dostoiévski, com foco na análise do protagonista, Rodion Raskólnikov. Para uma satisfatória compreensão da construção da subjetividade deste personagem fez-se necessário visualizá-lo em suas relações intersubjetivas. Assim, a análise foi estruturada em capítulos, cada qual destacando o diálogo entre duas \"vozes\", a do protagonista e a de outra personagem para que fossem explicitadas as contradições e implicações deste diálogo no processo de autoconsciência de Raskólnikov. Foram analisadas as relações do protagonista com Marmieládov, Razumíkhin, Lújin, Porfíri, Svidrigálov e Sônia. Além disso, foram tecidas considerações acerca do epílogo, considerando suas particularidades formais e funcionais em relação ao restante do romance. A entrada da psicologia está na tentativa de reconstituição do efeito estético do romance a partir da estruturação poética do texto, de modo que o protagonista seja considerado em sua ficcionalidade, e não como paciente da clínica psicológica, conforme os pressupostos teóricometodológicos da psicologia da arte de Vigotski. Para compreensão da organização formal do texto lançou-se mão da teoria polifônica de Bakhtin, bem como de outros autores da eslavística, mais ou menos congruentes a essa visão. Por fim, são apresentadas, em anexo, traduções de cinco textos da eslavística norte-americana e inglesa, todos precedidos por uma nota introdutória sobre os textos e seus autores. / This dissertation consists of an effort of bringing together literature and psychology, which tries to keep the integrity of both areas. The objective was to study Dostoevsky\'s novel Crime and Punishment, with an analysis of its main character, Rodion Raskolnikov. For a satisfying understanding of the construction of this character\'s subjectivity it was necessary to visualize him in his intersubjective relations. Thus, the analysis was structured in chapters, in which we underlined the dialogue between two \"voices\", the protagonist\'s and another character\'s, so that we could explicit the contradictions and implications of this dialogue in the selfconscience process of Raskolnikov. The relations of the protagonist with Marmeladov, Razumikhin, Luzhin, Porfiri, Svidrigailov and Sonia were analyzed. Besides, some notes were taken on the epilogue, considering its formal and functional particularities. The psychological goal rests in the attempt of reconstituting the novel\'s aesthetic effect through the understanding of its poetic structure, so that the protagonist is considered in his fictiousness and not as a patient in the psychological office, according to the theoretical-methodological presuppositions of Vygotsky\'s psychology of art. For an understanding of the formal organization of the text, we resorted to Bakhtin\'s polyphonic theory, as well as to other slavistic authors more or less congruent to this view. Finally, Portuguese translations of five texts from the American and British slavistics were presented and preceded by an introductory note on the texts and its authors.