On some mornings, as she pulls herself out of bed for class, senior MC Daubendiek feels a sharp spasm in her back. Throughout the day, her knees often stiffen and her shoulder grows sore.
To Daubendiek, occasional aches and pain are the tradeoffs for a successful athletic career. For the last four years, she’s been an attacker on the George Washington University Women’s Volleyball team. Over the course of hundreds of collegiate sets and spikes—not to mention thousands of practice and training hours lifting weights and running sprints— Daubendiek has endured concussions, stress fractures, rotator cuff strains and knee creaks from tendonitis to a tweaked meniscus.
“It can be challenging at times. Volleyball isn’t a contact sport—but it is a contact sport,” she laughed. “But if I could go back in time, I would definitely do it all again.”
Injuries are part of being an athlete, Daubendiek acknowledged. And they’re also part of her other identity—as an artist. A double major in art history and fine arts, Daubendiek works in art mediums from video to photography to sculpture—often exploring themes around our relationships to our bodies.
Her latest project bridges her two worlds. As a recipient of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences’ (CCAS) Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Daubendiek created an art installation that told the often-bruising story of student-athletes through one body part: their knees.
Using 11 cropped and enlarged photographs of her teammates’ knees, Daubendiek represented how the physical world marks bodies—both internally and externally.
The completed work—a solo exhibition called KNEES that debuted at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design’s Flagg Building for six weeks last fall—centered on 40”x 40” prints of her teammates’ scarred and battered knees. She also constructed an 8’x 12’ fluorescent pink wall within the gallery and repeatedly hit it with a dumbbell—a performance art sculpture that stood in for athletes’ weathered bodies.
“Fundamentally, she’s grappling with the psycho-social and physical relationship of athletics and the body,” said Associate Professor of Fine Arts Michele Carlson, Daubendiek’s Luther Rice faculty mentor. “At times this has manifested as critically grappling with the complex landscape of college athletics to a more personal inquiry around how the body operates in the conceptual and physical space of ‘athlete.’”
Dual Identities
Even before coming to GW, Daubendiek embraced both of her identities. As an athlete, she’s pushed her physical limits since the fifth grade—racing from volleyball and basketball courts to swimming pools and track meets. “I’m someone who is very competitive,” she said.
And while Daubendiek originally planned to major in political science at CCAS, she was inspired to follow her art enthusiasm after her first studio class. During an early assignment, Daubendiek was introduced to the work of avant-garde multimedia artist Laurie Anderson, who stretches the boundaries of art to include videos, soundscapes and performance pieces. “That really was a eureka moment for me as an artist—figuring out what art could be and what I could do beyond two-dimensional, painted image-making,” she explained.
Sports, she said, has influenced her art by providing a framework for thinking about bodies. Her work has ranged from sculptures of tattered sneakers and leggings to NCAA handbook pages wrapped in the shape of a volleyball to a video installation of MRIs from collegiate-sports injuries titled i use my bones too much.
She originally conceived her Luther Rice project as a series of video interviews with athletes on how their sports shaped their identities. But in conversations with gymnasts, soccer players and track and field athletes, the only universal experiences among them, Daubendiek realized, was their connection with their bodies. Time and again, she heard familiar stories about their heightened physical awareness, hyper mindful of how they sat in class or bent to tie their sneakers. “As athletes, we move through the world always thinking about our bodies,” she said.
As part of her exhibition, Daubendiek built a fluorescent pink wall and hit it with a 25 pound dumbbell—which she also displayed—to symbolize athletes’ injuries.
While photographing items in her studio, Daubendiek snapped a shot of her own knees—an image that immediately resonated with her. Knees often take the brunt of sports stress. As a volleyball player, Daubendiek was all too familiar with tight quads and IT band strains. For her project, she envisioned using knee images to symbolize athletes’ journeys. When a teammate skinned her knees at a practice, Daubendiek ran for her camera. “I probably freaked her out a little,” she laughed. That first bloody knee photo became a centerpiece of her exhibition.
Teammate Cianna Tejada, a junior biology major, posed for her knee photo after a Smith Center practice. “It was honestly a little funny having just my knees photographed,” she said. “But I was trusting [Daubendiek’s] vision.” At the exhibition opening, Tejada didn’t recognize her own knee at first, but was surprised at how the images struck her emotions. “I think [they] depict the hard work that we put in as athletes…and that even when there are bruises, we always get back up,” she said. “The message I got is that all of our scars are unique and all of our athletic stories are unique.”
Daubendiek resists interpreting her art but she hopes viewers walked away from KNEES with a deeper connection to their own bodies. The Luther Rice project also forms the basis of her thesis as she explores future art exhibits and a possible MFA in curatorial practices.
Meanwhile, she hopes to keep her professional volleyball dreams alive by signing on with a European league team. Far from deterring her sports ambitions, Daubendiek said her focus on athletes’ bodies—probing their pride and their pain—has bolstered her determination to continue playing. “I’m very grateful to have played in college,” she said. “And I’m not ready to call it quits yet.”
