Silpa: the Art of Love

Chapter 2
Femimissionary for Art

The radio-alarm clock blares out some tinny pop song, instantly snapping me awake. The room is immersed in sunlight, leaking into the room through every unplugged gap and soaking every corner, bathing the room in warmth. It’s 7:30 am. I turn off the radio, sit upright, and pick up the sketchbook.

Moving images of the dream return with the still-life picture: her face, his shoulder, her eyes as she dies. Who is she? Is she me? Does she represent a part of me that’s died, the part of me that still held onto hope of finding a permanent partner in this city of self-indulgent souls? Who is he? Is it that the man she or I’m with and the look she gives him symbolise the possibility of true love between an individual man and woman in spite of the oppression?

So many questions, and no easy answers for a woman who considers life to have only begun at the age of fourteen when I stumbled upon and read a copy of Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics. Millett exploded the dollhouse myths encouraged throughout my childhood by my mum, who herself was exploited by men and used up before being discarded by the man she ‘loved’, my father. This book, along with Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex and my favourite, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, began my true education that’s taught me to conceive questions of romantic love in terms of relationship power structures and sexual repression.

I place the sketchbook in my bag and put it out of my thoughts for now. I have a life to get on with, a career to advance, and a class I’ll be late for if I don’t hurry up. I’ll find a way to incorporate it into the rest of my work sometime later, if I can ever find the time. A quick shower and I look myself over in the mirror, getting right up close to gaze into my eye’s reflection. They are the same as when I was a young girl, with the translucent quality of the aquamarine ocean catching the sunlight cast on a clear day in the nets of my iris’s silky fibres. My eyes haven’t aged a day, but my youthful auburn hair is gradually giving way to grey around the roots. Need to dye again.

Faint wrinkle lines are beginning to spread out from the outer corner of each eye, like paint gradually cracking with the passage of time. I give each spot a couple of extra dabs of makeup. Still, a beauty at any age, regardless of the beauty myth imposed upon my gender, and even if I need more help from the cosmetics industry than I thought I would in my younger bra-burning phase.

I head to the kitchen for my breakfast; a cup of black coffee, that will have to be rushed or I’ll get caught in the snarl of peak-hour traffic. My two flatmates Joan and Debra, who are more like the elder sisters I never had, are ready for work and perched at the kitchen table scoffing scalding coffee as fast as humanly possible, a few minutes ahead of me in the race out the front door.

“Hi guys.”

“Hiya, Anna,” says Joan, smiling at me through unusually ivory teeth. I notice that it’s not her teeth that have changed colour since I’d last seen her on Friday, but her skin. Her usual golden brown tan is burnt nearly black, and she has a few more raisins sprinkled around her cheery face.

“Good morning, Anna. Trust you had a pleasant weekend?” asks Debra, blowing steam up out of the cup in a petulant cloud away from her clown-like complexion of thickly layered makeup and fire engine red lipstick. I haven’t seen her the entire weekend either and can only guess at what the extra coats of cosmetics are meant to cover. I take a closer look at her eyes: the burst blood vessels can’t be concealed even when camouflaged by mascara and eyeliner and hidden behind the thick black frames and bended light of her retro sixties style glasses.

Debra’s question is rhetorical; she knows I’ve been locked away in my bedroom slavishly writing my thesis. We both know it’s me who should be asking, only I’m too afraid what I might learn – of what I’d missed out on – a normal Monday morning dissection of weekend misadventures. But I must first satisfy my immediate needs before venturing on any conversation and ask, “Did you leave enough coffee for me?”

“Don’t panic, darls,” replies Joan, holding up the pot, “there’s at least half a mug of grounds left in the bottom.”

I grab a cup from the cupboard and pour the remnants until it becomes too syrupy to be anything but chewable – three quarters of a cup – and join my flatmates with elbows resting on the table, legs crossed beneath it.

“What amazing titbits of knowledge have you got planned to impart to your classroom of intellectual virgins today?” Debra continues in a barbed vein, clearly ready for a quick round of morning repartee to warm up for the trials and tribulations of the working day ahead.

Not having had more than a slurp of coffee yet I’m nowhere near as alert as Debra and bite the bait dangled before me, answering her tongue-in-cheek question in an effervescent tone, “I’m doing Chicago today, twice, in my two Feminist Art classes.”

“Chicago?” questions Debra. “From Sydney to Chicago and back twice in one day? I take back everything I ever said about you selling out the radical ideals of the young woman we first met six years ago for the career of the up-and-coming academic. You’re manifestly demonstrating women’s superiority to our male counterparts in more tangible ways than anyone would have thought humanly possible,” she declares followed by her characteristic throaty chortle.

“Judy Chicago—” I say flatly, resisting the urge to degenerate to Debra’s current level of mocking humour. I have long endured Debra’s sometimes more cutting remarks as we’re old friends and because she’s been somewhat of a mentor to me. I know too that other times she is the total opposite of the mood she’s in now. Ultimately she supports whatever I do despite sometimes playing devil’s advocate, which she claims to be for my own good. “Chicago is a key figure in the feminist art movement.”

“Feminism? I thought you’d started calling it gender egalitarianism,” scoffs Debra.

Ouch, that hurt.

Both Debra and Joan are in their early forties, a good ten or twelve years older than me. Although they don’t label themselves feminists, both are intrinsically feminist at heart, having grown up in the late sixties and early seventies at the peak of the second-wave of the women’s rights movement. Because of the struggles of their older sisters, or the mothers to my generation, their lives are now mostly on an equal footing with the men around them. They no longer need the word ‘feminist.’ As a third-wave feminist, I’m concerned with the inclusion of men within the gender equality concept: that’s what Debra meant by the derogatory gender egalitarianism remark. My greatest concern, and the topic of my PhD, is with the rights of women in the developing world.

“There, there darls,” interposes Joan, playing either referee or peacemaker between us as always. “We’re not students in one of your art classes, you can make a joke out of everything with us.”

“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve got a big day. I’ve got that meeting on.” I pause, leaving them a moment to interject, but they remain indifferently silent. “You know, the one I told you about at least a hundred times.”

“Oh that one,” says Debra, then changing her tune to be more conciliatory. “I’m sure you’ll be the one they choose.” Then back to sarcasm, “After all, you are sleeping with the Dean.” She’s unable to resist one last dig, any sense of her usual subtlety lost somewhere in the blur of her hangover.

“Debra!” exclaims Joan. “Stop bullying our little sister.” She pats my arm like I was a child. “Just how important can this exhibition in Thailand be?” she asks. “I mean, you’ve exhibited before and you’ll exhibit again.”

“Yeah, but this will be my first solo show since the one three years ago at The Gunnery, and would count as my PhD exhibition. If I can do this show in Asia, it will lend a whole lot more weight to the argument I’m making with my work.”

“But, darls, you always said you can do your exhibition just as well in Australia as anywhere else,” continues Joan sympathetically.

“Yeah, there’s plenty of unfortunate sex industry slaves, mail order brides, and exploited factory workers traded here from Asia, but it still would mean a lot for my work to be viewed and accepted in Asia by Asian women.”

“But you’ve never been to Asia, Anna. You can’t just go there and preach to these people as a Western academic, like some modern day femimissionary,” states Debra argumentatively, still in a disagreeable mood.

“Well, like a missionary for my god Art, I’ve gone where it has lead me. So far my art hasn’t taken me there. I can only hope that is about to change.”

“You’ve got more than a hope,” says Joan supportively. “You’ve been working towards it for years. I know, I’ve been watching you put in the hard yards. Nobody deserves to succeed more than you.”

“Thanks.”

Debra stands and glances at her watch. “I hate to be the one to break up one of Anna’s therapy sessions but some of us have real jobs to go to.”

I throw down the last of my coffee and we file outside, down the flight of stairs to the passageway leading to the street. Through the glass panels of the caf? below our apartment, I can see it’s doing a brisk business for a weekday morning. It’s only 8am, but the summer sun is already high in the sparkling blue sky and blinding, forcing us to put on our sunglasses as top priority. I look over my two best friends under the harsh and unflattering spotlight. Unlike myself, they both evidently have had too much of a good weekend.

We’re so dissimilar: just like real siblings. Joan is dressed in the casual yet sophisticated apparel of a successful interior designer, loose fitting chamois top and chestnut skirt. Debra is dressed to kill in the black pants and red blouse of the cutthroat world of international finance. I’m wearing a t-shirt and paint splattered jeans ready for school.

“All right, darls,” says Joan in parting, kissing me then Debra on the cheek. “I’m parked that way,” she says, pointing up Campbell Parade.

“The Beemer’s that way,” responds Debra, nodding in the direction of the street around the corner.

“I’m over there,” I say, referring to another backstreet somewhere further down the parade.

“Good luck for today, Anna,” says Debra, letting out a deep breath. “Sorry I’ve been such a bitch this morning. Forgive me?”

“Of course,” I readily reply.

She kisses and smiles at me. Her overdone lipstick exaggerates the expression but can’t conceal her real emotional feeling of true friendship and genuine care for me. I return the smile, and we split up.