About Me
I’m an artist, researcher and lecturer. For my wage, I work in academia, currently as a post doc researcher, but also as a lecturer in art and design. I’ve been a practicing artist since 2006, and have done many many jobs to sustain myself and my artistic practice - as it has never summoned a reliable or steady wage.
My artistic practice, which includes research and writing follows many threads, often at once. Themes that are recurring and important to me include; feminist performance art; autotheoretical writing and performance; queerness - an interest in existing outside cis and heteronormative notions of gender and sexuality; class struggle; taking aim at the hostile environments produced by late capitalism and 15 years of political austerity; women, non-binary and trans people’s experiences of snapping, breaking down and refusal; sonic artefacts and practices of listening. In 2022 I completed my practice based PhD Caring to Listen. It was named as outstanding my external examiners.
I’m often found staring in disbelief at the state of our world in terms of politics, and the everyday life of precarious queer, classed and racialised existence. My own experiences of precarity, chronic stress and that of other people’s. I’m interested in unmasking, unveiling, undressing structures of inequity presented as inevitable, normal. I believe in the potency and power of artistic process, which I extend to writing.
I know, through my own experience of making, making, making, that creative and artistic expression can at times, in the right conditions, offer a form of individual and collective liberation. Especially in its capacity to surface what lies beneath conscious thought, and to summon pathos and affect in the maker and audiences bodies. I will be writing on here on a regular basis, but in an ad hoc fashion, and when the mood takes me.
Why subscribe?
If you’re interested in artistic forms of refusal, chaos, humour and critique, the body and affect, Body Matters might be of interest to you. I’m particularly interested in queer, precarious intersectional and revolting bodies. Bodies that refuse, rant and rage under the conditions of late capitalism. I write auto-theoretically, and about my everyday life, so expect matter of the heart and body, alongside intellectual musings. You can find out more about my work here: www.caitlinshpherd.com. I would love it if you want to join me along the way.
