‘One Size Does Not Fit All’
Art and ‘Androids,’ among tools to examine themes of body image at IU South Bend
By Kathy Borlik, Published February 10, 2006
Art should raise questions and open minds to discussions. Art should motivate social change and push the envelope. Beverly Naidus, an artist-educator, recently opened her world of art with a mission to students at IU South Bend.
Naidus was invited to speak during “The Mutable Body” lecture series, which is examining the ever-changing human body. The theme includes a look at this year’s One Book, One Campus selection, the science fiction classic, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The series continues each Monday evening with lectures on a variety of topics from invited guests and faculty. The topics range from genetics to fashion.
In addition to the lecture, Naidus went into the classrooms and had a lunchtime workshop on art as a social force. She is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and is best known for audience participation and site-specific installations about nuclear explosions, unemployment, consumerism, women and self image, and environmental illness.
She said that she has received comments that she is too negative and too much of a complainer. But that hasn’t stopped her from taking on other subjects with her art.
Naidus’ work on female body image is on exhibit through Friday, March 3, in the IU South Bend art gallery.
One Size Does Not Fit All is a series of pictures snipped from fashion magazines and pasted into collages (see below). The collages are teamed with comments from women about bulimia, thigh size and achieving perfection.
“People waste time on body image rather than finding solutions to real problems,” she said.
Naidus’ series title is also the campus theme for the 2005-06 school year. Events connected to the theme will focus on body changes, mutations or artificial alterations.
The public is invited to the lecture series at 5:30 p.m. each Monday (and one Wednesday) through April 17. All lectures will be in Room 1001, Wiekamp Hall. All lectures are free.
Upcoming lectures, topics and speakers at IUSB
• Feb. 20: “Defective, Delinquent and Disabled: Biologist and Geneticists Construct the American ‘Other’: 1900-1970,” by Greg Dorr, postdoctoral fellow, Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology and Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• March 6: “Constructing the Body: Fashion, Feminism and Sexuality in American History,” by Lois Banner, history and gender studies professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
• March 13: Focus on perception, by Richard Gottwalt, IU South Bend emeritus professor of psychology.
• March 20: “The Multiracial Body: Interrogating U.S. Fascination with Mestizaje,” by George Sanchez, professor of history, American studies and ethnicity at UCLA.
• March 27: Focus on visual culture and film, by Hiram Perez, English professor, Montclair State University, Montclair, N.J.
• April 3: “Flip Flop,” focus on body language, by Anna Beatrice Scott, professor of dance, University of California-Riverside.
• April 10: “Symbolism in Human Form,” by Philip Petrie and Norman Nilsen, artists and adjunct professors at IU South Bend.
• April 17: “The Body of the Slave and the Body of the Slaveholder,” by Andrew Levy, English professor, Butler University.
• May 1: Presentation of final student projects.
For more information, call 574-520-4527.
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