Sasha Baskin
Using digital stills from episodes of “The Bachelor,” my work addresses pop culture as a modern form of mythology. Within reality television, I find a new kind of repetitive storytelling and the creation of new gods and goddesses. In the Greek Myth of the judgment of Paris, three goddesses wait for a mortal to offer them an apple proclaiming the chosen one the most beautiful; on “The Bachelor,” women wait for roses delivered at overly dramatized “Rose Ceremonies” when a man makes the choice of whom he wants to keep dating and sends the rest home. The rose is a new manifestation of the apple: another icon for a new religious system, another symbol of validation. I explore this iconic symbol of the rose as a repetitive image of purity, sexuality, traditional values, and femininity. My work examines and critiques this repetitive structure, this drive to create repetitive mythologies; I recreate the stories told in renaissance tapestries through high heels, hair extensions, and contoured makeup on reality television stages. I weave screenshots like chapters in a hero’s journey and overlay digital patterns and lace grids to create veiled goddesses out of reality television starlets. I render these screenshots in hand and jacquard woven threads and hand-worked filet lace. Exploring line, color, and tone through thread, structure, and texture, I incorporate the repetitive structure of myth into the very fabric of their representation.
In The Martyr (Here for the Right Reasons), the woman in this screenshot is often considered the "villain" of this season of the reality television program "The Bachelor," however she was also the only contestant who accurately predicted the lead's inability to make a decision and commit and called him out on his problematic behavior. I wanted to examine her character as a martyr, one who sacrificed her reputation to expose the truth.
The Martyr (Here for the Right Reasons), Filet lace, fishing net, cotton thread, Screenshot from "The Bachelor" (Season 22), 2019