By Alexis Mabry | alexismabry.com
Women of BMX, lend me your shinners!! This is an open call for submissions of images and videos, specifically looking for clips of falling, and images of injuries sustained while riding BMX. This is for an on-going art project that I hope to have the women’s BMX community involved in. This artwork is about the pure passion, blood, sweat, and tears that come from BMX and the nuances that come with being a woman in a subcultural sport. These artworks will consist of a visual emphasis on injuries sustained in BMX, posting “fails” or falling videos to social media as a signal of strength, empathy, risk, and breaking paradigms.
As an artist, I am interested in opening these conversations surrounding women in BMX through the material art world by manifesting the physical and mental obstacles in BMX offering a new perspective in the art space. As a woman who participates in BMX, I interpret feminine empowerment through abject expression. I interpret the sharing of personal, bodily gore to social media as extreme evidence of participation, forms of confrontation, forms of owning violence, and valorizing the understanding of pain, mental and physical, of failure and the power to get up and try again. Failure is an essential part of growth. Growth for the self and growth for a community. What happens before, during, and after an impact is an extremely potent metamorphosis, physically and psychologically. The power of failure is echoed as a new strength. These scars are battle wounds. How proud I am of the calluses on my hands and comparing the collection of shin scars and broken bones that I call “Blood Trophies”.
For this project, I am looking specifically for “fail” or falling videos, and images of shinners, cuts, scrapes, scabs, bruises, surgery scars, x-rays, bloody noses, busted lips, black eyes, raspberries, broken bones, blood in hair – any injury, big or small, you are comfortable sharing. There is no injury too small or too big and gross for this project. All faces in images will be partially obscured for privacy/anonymity. The focus is mainly on the injury or the action of falling.
The quality of the video or image does not matter. It can be high res, or old, gritty, grainy, or blurry. For this project sometimes the worse the quality – the better. Submissions can be sent directly to my direct messages on instagram, @alexis.e.mabry, nothing fancy, just send them on over! Submissions can be anonymous if you choose, meaning I will only tag you on social media in finished pieces if you consent.
I am happy to send more information or provide more details about this project if anyone has any questions. My general goal with this project is to get conversations flowing in BMX through art to show the nuanced perspectives of women in subculture sports.
I want this project to be another visual voice for this community that I am deeply passionate about and to be able to work with and open conversations with other women in BMX. Keep riding, keep shredding, keep falling, keep getting back up!
