This week at Pulling Together we looked at last week’s work sheet and discussed “What my body image/art says about me.” Taking mehndi as an example we decided that it was an artistic display of our culture and South Asian heritage as well as some women wearing it to follow the hadith of the Islamic faith. A wedding ring is a western tradition that members of the group have adopted to show their marital status but it could also be seen as a symbol of conformity. Wearing a Mangal Sutra or Sindoor are also outward symbols of marriage and often seen as a very personal and emotional way to adorn ourselves.

This week at Pulling Together we continued with how we adorn ourselves and what that says about us.

This sheet was entitled “In what ways do we decorate our bodies to create the perfect body?” We labelled the body with as many things as possible we could think of. These included permanent alterations including breast implants and nose jobs; temporary alterations including makeup and jewellery fake nails, clothing; cultural adornments including henna and bindis. Then we created a colour code to represent the words selected in exercise two and then place coloured dots next to the labelling words. Several different colours could be used for each word if appropriate.

e.g,Nose piercing- fashion, culture, religion

Plastic surgery (boob job) – fashion, health, personal and emotional

Clothes- functional, political, culture, fashion, medical

This exercise was a good way to highlight that body adornments have multiple functions and it helped to challenge the group’s perceptions on certain areas.

This week we continued with our Body Art: A Mark of Identity project. This week we looked further into the way we adorn ourselves and what we want to say about ourselves. Collecting words about the way we see ourselves and other and making a montage of them. Giving us a base to work on in the next few weeks

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This week at Pulling Together we saw the group return for the first time this. After a quick catch up with each other of how we spent the holidays we started our new and exciting project. Body Art: A Mark of Identity is a six week project looking at how we see ourselves and what we use to adorn ourselves.