The nature of collage, precisely because of its peculiar character that indulges and encourages shifting, interrupted, fantastic, ironic, cyborg combinations, is a technique that has seen appropriation by many feminist authors.
Babbling and deferred, Kurland’s images tell of a restorative and loving process. Each new image is an attempt at a reclamation of history, a dismemberment of the postures of patriarchy, an inversion from the gendered process that determined the narrative, a modest but important attempt to reposition the terms of a discourse to this day still heavily flawed by inequality.
Although the female gaze and the challenge introduced by these compositions differ in style, SCUMB Manifesto is a continuation of those represented in Kurland’s previous photographic projects, Girl Pictures (1997-2002) and Mama Babies (2004-2007).
The images in SCUMB Manifesto are many things, an attempt to reposition the female role within a narrative, an urgency to produce a meaningful critique of the determination of an imaginary, but most of all a desire to assert the freedom to create, destroy, imagine, and reshape our social and visual imaginary.