In the morning, while she withdraws from bed for lessons, George Washington University Senior Mc Daubendiek Smells a sharp spasm behind his back. Throughout the day, his knees often stiffens and his shoulder grows in the wound.
For Daubendiek, occasional pain and pain are compromises for a successful sports career. Over the past four years, she has been an attacker of the GW volleyball women’s team. During hundreds of sets and collegial peaks, not to mention thousands of practices and hours of training by lifting weights and making sprints run – Daubendiek has endured concussion, stress fractures, stumps of the caps of the rotators and the erases of the knee of the tendonitis to a modified meniscus.
“It can sometimes be difficult. Volleyball is not a contact sport, but it is a contact sport, “she said. “But if I could go back in time, I would certainly start everything again.”
The injuries are part of the athlete, recognized Daubendiek. And they are also part of his other identity – as artist. Double major in art history and fine arts, Daubendiek works in art mediums, from video to photography through sculpture – often exploring themes around our relationships with our body.
His latest project folds his two worlds. As a recipient of Colombian arts and science college‘(Ccas) Luther Rice undergraduate research scholarshipDaubendiek has created an artistic installation that told the often history-athletes’ history through a part of the body: their knees.
Using 11 cropped and enlarged photographs of the knees of his teammates, Daubendiek represented how the physical world marks bodies – both internally and externally.
The finished work – a solo exhibition called “knees” which made its debut Corcoran School of the Arts and DesignThe FLAGG building for six weeks last fall – centered on prints of 40 “X 40” of the laid and beaten of its teammates. She also built a fluorescent pink wall of 8’x 12 ‘in the gallery and hit it several times with a dumbbell – a performance sculpture which was held for the altered bodies of athletes.
“Basically, she is struggling with the psychosocial and physical relationship of athletics and the body,” said the Associate Professor of Fine Arts Michele CarlsonMentor of the Faculty of Rice Luther of Daubendiek. “Sometimes it has been manifested as a critical way with the complex landscape of university athletics to a more personal survey on the functioning of the body in the conceptual and physical space of” the athlete “.
Double identity
Even before coming to GW, Daubendiek kissed his two identities. As an athlete, she has pushed her physical limits since the fifth year-going from volleyball and basketball terrains to pools and track meetings. “I am someone who is very competitive,” she said.
And while Daubendiek was pregnant to specialize in political science at the CCAS, she was inspired to follow her art enthusiasm after her first studio class. During an early mission, Daubendiek was presented to the work of the avant-garde multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, who extends the limits of art to include videos, sound landscapes and performance pieces. “It was really a moment Eureka for me as an artist-defining what art could be and what I could do beyond the creation of two-dimensional and painted images,” she explained.
Sport, she said, influenced her art by providing a framework to think of bodies. His work has gone from sculptures of tatters in tatters and leggings to the pages of Manuel de la NCAA wrapped in the form of a volleyball to a video installation of Arm from wounds with collegial sports entitled “I use my bones too much”.
Originally, she designed her Luther Rice project as a series of video interviews with athletes on how their sports have shaped their identity. But in conversations with gymnasts, football players and athletics athletes, the only universal experiences among them, produced Daubendiek, was their link with their bodies. Many and many times, she heard familiar stories about their increased physical conscience, super aware of how they sat in class or leaning to tie their sneakers. “As an athletes, we cross the world while still thinking of our bodies,” she said.
As part of her exhibition, Daubendiek built a fluorescent pink wall and struck it with a 25 -pound dumbbell – which she also showed – to symbolize the injuries of athletes.
While photographing objects in her studio, Daubendiek took a photo of her own knees – an image that immediately resonated with her. The knees often gain the weight of sporting stress. As a volleyball player, Daubendiek knew the tight quads too much and the strip strains. For her project, she planned to use knee images to symbolize the trips of athletes. When a teammate flapped his knees during a training session, Daubendiek ran for his camera. “I probably panicked it a little,” she said. This first bloody knee photo has become a centerpiece of his exhibition.
His teammate Cianna Tejada, a major junior in biology, posed for his knee photo after a Smith Center practice. “It was honestly a little funny to have my knees photograph,” she said. “But I trusted vision (Daubendiek).” When opening the exhibition, Tejada did not recognize his own knee at the beginning, but was surprised to see how the images struck his emotions. “I think that (they) describe the hard work that we have devoted as anhletes … and that even when there are bruises, we always get up,” she said. “The message I have received is that all our scars are unique and that all of our sports stories are unique.”
Daubendiek resists the interpretation of her art, but she hopes that viewers have moved away from “knees” with a deeper link with their own body. The Luther Rice project is also the basis of her thesis when exploring future art exhibitions and a possible MFA in conservation practices.
Meanwhile, she hopes to keep her professional volleyball dreams alive by registering with a European League team. Far from dissuading his sports ambitions, Daubendiek said that his accent on the bodies of athletes – enriching their pride and pain – has strengthened his determination to continue playing. “I am very grateful to have played university,” she said. “And I’m not ready to call it yet.”