Officially Unapologetic

Harmony Ráine

Strongly inspired by historical and contemporary socio-political issues, Harmony Ráine utilizes photography, collage, painting, sculpture, and installation to explore a wide variety of topics surrounding the human condition, notions of identity, (in)equality and social justice, and our relationship with the environment. She is currently writing her MAIS 701 final project on art as a visual language for the communication of pain, and expects to complete the MAIS program in February 2015 with an Equity Studies / Cultural Studies dual focus. She graduated from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., with a Bachelor of Arts (2010) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (2011).

Primal

H. Ráine, 2011, Digital Print

These works are part of Officially Unapologetic (2011), a series of self-portraits and collages I created with the intent to expose and address pain and trauma, and to examine the power of self-representation as a means of articulating pain and reclaiming agency. I am strongly inspired by such important pioneering artists as Frida Kahlo, Hannah Wilke, Jo Spence, Catherine Opie, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Flanagan, and others who embodied the feminist idiom “the personal is political” by exposing their pain publicly through self-portraiture. The choice to reveal one’s vulnerabilities—even to the point of trauma and victimization—represents self-acceptance, empowerment, and control. It is in this way that self-portraiture becomes a voice for the silenced and an unapologetic act of resistance against pain and oppression in its many forms. Although I use a self-as-subject strategy and items excavated from my own lived experience, the works are not purely autobiographical; rather, they are meant to address broader social issues and create an uncomfortable tension between the personal and socio-cultural/political.

Red

H. Ráine, 2011, Digital Print

Untitled

H. Ráine, 2011, Digital Print