The body is the subject/object of human perception. The living, thinking body is the interface for all stimulation, be it visible, tactile, spatial, auditory or olfactory.

 

In my recent installation and sculptural work I have been investigating the social and sexual aspects of bodily perception and body image by creating immersive or participatory situations. In these settings, viewers are confronted by representations of body parts where “the dry outside moves toward the slippery inside.[1]”

 

These quasi-bodies are sexually ambiguous conglomerates of fabric that play on the both viewer’s desire and hesitation to touch them and the known conventions of the gallery setting. I have created protuberances, openings and crevices with bright, garish fabric that burst with stuffing, or seep with insulation foam. I blur the boundaries between the inside and outside of these sexually fluid, amorphous figures by feigning sites of abjection that solicit tactile investigation despite themselves. 

 

I play with known architectural tropes of social spaces, transitory passages and areas of refuge to highlight the complex interrelation between one’s own body, other bodies and the built environment. This often manifests in the inclusion of intersecting pathways, walled corridors, pod-like enclosures and elements that viewers can actually move around in space.

 

My installations are a reconfiguration of bodily representation in art from that of the two-dimensional image and the autonomous figure to lived-experience, space, materiality and temporality.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Betterton, Rosemary. An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists, and the Body. London ; New York: Routledge, 1996.

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