Frances Goodman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frances Goodman (born 1975) is a South African mixed-media artist who currently lives in Johannesburg. Her work makes use of acrylic nails and other unconventional materials and is "interested in the relations between femininity, costuming, and role-playing".

Quotes

• “Women are often asked to make media-influenced choices about our bodies,”
• “Fake nails and false eyelashes, though, go against that. You’re able to become expressive, to become someone else. You don’t become the idea of who a woman should be. You become the antithesis.”
  • Cohen, Alina (26 January 2016), South African Artist Explores Feminism Through Intimate Sculptures, Vice Media, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• “I don’t buy into your heterosexual traditions. We know that last claim is a lie because in some ways we all do buy into these traditions, it’s very difficult not to."
  • Rodney, Seph (31 March 2016), South African Artist Nails It with Sculptures Made from Thousands of Press-Ons, Hyperallergic, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• “The mundane, the ordinary and the trivial have always been of interest to me, as I believe they all obscure dark places, issues and emotions that people do not wish to confront.”
  • Frances Goodman "Beneath Her", NY Art Beat, 2017, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• "A shift happens where you become governed by your wants rather than your needs. It’s no longer about getting food, paying the bills, survival. Suddenly, it’s all about needing to go to the gym, needing those new shoes or that new car…"
• "All the addictions I deal with are about keeping up appearances"
• ‘These objects are about how you look, how you show yourself to the world. You pop a little pill when everything is falling apart inside and suddenly you can put on a smiley face, go out into the world and get your work done.’
  • Frances Goodman, Elle Decor, 16 December 2013, archived from the original on 4 November 2018, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• “Rapacious is a fantastic word,” says Goodman. “It means needy and greedy and assertive and aggressive, all these attributes we’re taught to be embarrassed about. We’re taught not to want. ‘Rapacious’ asserts these characteristics that are only criticized in women, not men.”
• “There’s still a need for feminism and a voice for what women have to contend with that men don’t.”
• “Fake nails and false eyelashes, though, go against that. You’re able to become expressive, to become someone else. You don’t become the idea of who a woman should be. You become the antithesis.”
  • Cohen, Alina (26 January 2016), South African Artist Explores Feminism Through Intimate Sculptures, Vice Media, retrieved 23 March 2025.

Quotes About Her

• "Goodman makes a mass of thousands of purple acrylic nails into a surging, rippling, mottled object that suggests a vagina but might be a version of the Charybdis that was encountered by Odysseus. Flailing toward the viewer from an adjacent wall, Goodman has fashioned another monster"
• “Yet Goodman, who has been working for some time with the question of how to be a woman who wields femininity and negotiates inherited roles tied to profound ideologies, wants to stay right here in our contradictions. She is telling us that artifice isn’t nothing; it’s trying to make sense of the world of gender roles, as well as one’s place in it."
  • Rodney, Seph (31 March 2016), South African Artist Nails It with Sculptures Made from Thousands of Press-Ons, Hyperallergic, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• "The strength of her work lies in the fact that it’s often presented with sheen, sensuous exteriors which allude to the latent libidinal energy that stimulates consumption, as seen in her use of glossy nail varnish."
  • Frances Goodman "Beneath Her", NY Art Beat, 2017, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• "Emptiness is a key notion in Goodman’s work to date. Sparkling suitcases – emblazoned with brand logos and covered in sequins, but empty – question the vacuity of global brand fetishism."
  • Frances Goodman, Elle Decor, 16 December 2013, archived from the original on 4 November 2018, retrieved 23 March 2025.
• "Goodman’s art focuses specifically on the subject of middle class experience and prejudices; looking at everyday obsessions and superficial behavior (such as fanatic exercise culture and conventions of marriage and beauty) she explores the way individuals respond to our contemporary, highly materialistic society and the idiosyncratic coping mechanisms they develop."
• "Her works reflects a morbid ambiguity of excess and loss; a dislocation between appearance and truth. ‘Beautiful’ or seductive objects, environments and installations are used as a ruse to obscure the primary subject matter, which is often dark, complicated and messy."
  • Past Resident 2012: Aeroplastics Contemporary Artist Frances Goodman, International Studio & Curatorial Program, 2012, retrieved 23 March 2025.