Material Bodies

This project was created in my time at Royal college of Art as part of my final degree project. I created soft sculptures made using nylon, lycra and brass wires. I learnt alternative ways of printing on fabrics, working with metal, and creating my first ever photo sculptures.  I photographed my own body along with other models, photographed microscopic images of my skin, hair and leaves and further larger landscapes like antelope canyon and utah. 

In my work, I want to achieve a certain lightness of being. If anxiety can be looked at as a metaphorical weight placed onto our mind and body, I want to seek a sense of weightlessness that can be achieved through the process of creating art and by relieving the pressures put on the body by society. By looking at the body as a material affected by gravity (weight) and light (photography), I am able to critique the patriarchal structures that have shaped my own body and life. I can locate  deeper connections between the body and our environment by looking at the body as a material similar to stone or fabric. I've always seen faces and bodies within natural topographies and this project reverses this idea and looks at the body topographically. In the space I have created as my art practice, the synthesis of images and material go beyond gender, objectification and bodies become fabric, free flowing. I associate fabrics and textiles with a certain idea of skin and by extension, kinship. A second skin that can be sculpted and moulded; a veil to create a double image, or a canvas to print, stretch and manipulate. 

Certain parts of our bodies hold trauma and are looked at as excess or oddly shaped, these parts often look more natural than perfectly sculpted bodies. Folds on our hips, stretch marks on thighs, girdles on our stomach look like canyons and caves to me. These parts that hold so much insecurity and shame directly cause body image issues making the experience of the body unnatural. The experience thats taken away from us through years of misrepresentation and unhealthy body ideals. I want to return the experience of the body back to the viewers, so that they can look at themselves the way they look at a landscape, with peace and with lightness. To look at a body as a metrial is an exercise in looking at is as something that holds potential and not something thats always lacking.