This year saw some changes to the way we at Resilife ran events, but run events we did! This blog post series is designed to show off some of the fantastic work you as students have put into engaging with us, and to any new students reading this as you move into halls for the first time – these are just tasters of some of the events our Senior Residents run – which will only get bigger and better once everything (hopefully…) returns to normal!
Part 1 is our International Women’s Day Art and Writing competition, with a theme of ‘Choose to Challenge’, where we all came together to produce art (competition open to those identifying as female) and written pieces (open to all genders). With prizes of £50 CASSArt vouchers open to each winner, we received over 50 fantastic entries, which were assessed by a panel of 6 per category, each containing experts in their field. Below are some of our fantastic entries, and some comments on what made them stand out to us. The quality of all submissions really blew us away, so thank you to each and every one of you who got involved!
‘Choose to Challenge’: Art competition
In first place was a hugely original piece, with a stunning tale behind the work, shown below:
‘Writing traced from the stories I made up when I was very little. At this age I unknowingly subverted the fairytales that were read to me (the princess would never marry the prince she’d tell him she was focused on her career… or they got divorced) . This is one of many torsos I am making that honour forgotten women in history. This is Freddie Oversteegen who, along w her sister, continuously overpowered Nazi Soldiers by enticing them with her femininity. She would seduce them at bars and promise them a kiss. She would then take them to forests whilst her sister would shoot them from behind a tree.’
And the equally as wonderful two runners up:
‘I’d like to submit an art work I done that was looking into challenging women abuse in Middle East, it’s showing disfigured mother and daughter who were victims of acid attack.’
A wonderful number of different styles were submitted – from charcoal, to digital, to pencil, acrylic, pen and more! Names of the winners are not shown for anonymity.
‘Choose to Challenge’: Writing Competition
Once again, we received a broad variety of entries, each with their own merit, delicacies and intricacies, which were assessed by our panel of staff and writers. Here is our winner:
Queer babushka
Musaka
Bed-knobs and chunky knit headspace
Broom sticks and head-scarfs wrapping headaches warping hope
Egg yolks, parmesan. Mayonnaise and breadcrumbs
Glaze me like a teapot with one of those weird puff pastry egg brush things
Grab me by the handle and just you watch me sprout fields of pieces of paper folded up and tucked away
I don’t want you to graze me
I want my body be a fist full of food like that feast they have in Shrek where they have a food fight that was fuelled by family feuds
DONKEY
Shameless cottage core,
Aimless soft porn
Doilies, boy toys, toilets seat covers and boiling phallic kettles
I am a queer babushka
I am not a baby
I am a big bitch – fuck fairies
I got a big nose square toes and I’ve been told people find me scary
This witch has a pointy hat, a black cat
And a Broom sticks that never got to fly because there is so much shit on my kitchen floor
I wallow in the potato peel
Put me in with spouts and rinse me colander tossed of my mud,
I want to go back
Underground
Where I can hear my own heart beat again
Where I can chop myself in half and keep on growing
Spud me square
Hit me head on
My cyanide roots will fight or flight to find the light
And I
I will grow
Thank you for reading part 1 of ‘events of this year’ – leave some kind messages for our wonderful artists and writers, and I’ll see you in the next post!