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  /  Get Stabbed and Boogie
Get Stabbed and Boogie, 2019
Megan Powell, presents an ongoing body of work that presents a narrative of survival following an attempted murder. In Get Stabbed and Boogie, the viewer learns that the masked figure within the photographs is in reality, the artist. She is depicted inebriated and dancing in a state of rapture, having undergone reconstructive surgery to her face following a stabbing several hours earlier. She is bloody and bandaged, captured and processed through her own lens. These photographic images mark the artist’s singular recovery, transforming a moment of violence into artifice and decoration.
Get Stabbed and Boogie is built around a framework of dark humour. It attempts to find reciprocity within the isolation of a particular incident whilst exploring the aftermath of traumatic experience. Within the works the viewer is presented with virtuous nuns alongside fragmented female body parts in order to depict the archetypal biblical narrative of Madonna versus whore. Powell’s output is one of exchange and encounter, and draws upon the vulnerabilities and responsibilities of trauma, post-trauma and process, as a means to exploring empathy, tenderness, freedom, and the power of play
Text by Alison Criddle for The Fourdrinier

 

Photographer:

Megan Powell