My choices in order were 1. The Power 2. Only Ever Yours 3. Vox 4. The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m a Fantasy girl all the way, my bookshelf consists of fantasy, romance and a bit of mystery so when I saw the options, The Power and Only Ever Yours stood out to me. But I didn’t read either of those in fact I got my last choice, The Handmaid’s Tale. At first I was annoyed that I got my last choice but when I though about it a bit longer I was glad, I think reading The Handmaid’s Tale is something that I should’ve done at some point in my life and because it’s not really my type of book I probably wouldn’t have read it on my my own whereas I will probably read my top choices sometime on my own.

Well, enough about me choosing a book, let me tell you about the project. I was in a group with 3 other classmates who were reading The Handmaid’s Tale, Ryder, Johnathan, and Jakub. Once a week for 4 weeks we got together in class and talked about what we have seen in the book so far. We each had the task of making a backgrounder, which is just looking deeper into a specific part of the book, wether it be connections to our lives today or questioning what was going on in the book at the time.

Here are my backgrounders if you want to see them, if you haven’t read the book there will be !!spoilers!!

Author’s Craft, Questions, History, Connections

While we were reading the book my class was also looking into conceptual art, because our final task would be to create a conceptual art piece. We did research into what conceptual art was, the history of conceptual art, and what the purpose of conceptual art is. We looked into specific pieces like One and Three Chairs and Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia. We learned that conceptual art is an art form that has a focus on the idea rather than the craftsmanship. In conceptual art the work isn’t as important, the decisions and the planning is what’s important and a lot of the time it’s meant to provoke people, it provokes strong feelings like anger, sadness or joy.

During that time we weren’t only looking into conceptual art, we were also looking into the history of feminism. We focused on the 4 Waves of Feminism and some of the big moments in feminist history like the song You Don’t Own Me, the discovery of contraceptives, and a book called The Feminine Mystique.

After all of that learning and reading we had to create our final piece, the conceptual art. My task was to create an art piece that portrayed a theme from The Handmaid’s Tale also present in our current world.

For my art piece I used a large cardboard box that contains “a woman”. I made the box look beaten up and disregarded to further my point that women are not seen as human, rather seen as objects that can be tossed around without consequence. I put labels on the box to show what was inside, and I added a QR code to one of the labels that lead to warnings. I added a photo of a crying eye looking through a hole in the box and a nail clawing out. The inspiration behind my conceptual art piece was the idea of women in The Handmaid’s Tale being property of commanders (men) and their only purpose is to produce children.

When presenting my piece I was incredibly proud of my idea and how the art came out, I had some provoking conversations with people who came up to me. One woman asked me a question that surprised me, she asked “have you ever felt like what you’re trying to portray?” I didn’t really know how to respond, I said no, but that question stayed with me for a while. Another woman asked me how my art piece could show women fighting back or the actual act of feminism. I wasn’t prepared for that question but I realized I had an answer anyways, the fact that the “woman” inside the box was clawing out showed that she wanted to get out and there was still a way out.

That project was a emotional rollercoaster for me and I was incredibly interested in what was being taught. I hope you enjoyed my post about what I learned and my journey through the project. Until next time!