My artistic practice is an archaeology of the senses. Through sculpture and installation, I give form to that which unsettles us. That which stops us in our tracks. That which stirs us. That which sets us alight! I seek to make tangible, alive and poetic the things we come up against every day.
Within the thickness of the fibre, I sculpt what we share most intimately: what settles within us. Our turmoil. Our persistence. What emerges. What refuses to fade away. I draw on individual stories to explore the relationship we have with our ‘living memories’ – whether experienced or endured, recent or more distant. Played out and replayed endlessly, these memories become ‘imaginary landscapes of real emotions’, perpetual fictions. My work sheds light on the invisible framework of our attitudes and examines the internalised systems that shape our relationships and bonds.
Layer upon layer, through accumulation, compression and shifting, I construct a structuring body. A matrix. From these ‘bodies’, hand-knotted cotton threads escape. Embroidery emerges from the thickness of the fabric. Beads glisten and border certain forms. I seek points of anchorage — compasses with which to await the dawn.
These imposing ‘bodies’ unfold. They whirl. They rise. They float. They embrace drifting. Uncertainty. Like ‘swaying vessels’, in search of a new balance. And so, I choose to transform this tearing away into a gentle yet powerful embrace. Gentleness should not be confined to the private sphere, to intimacy, nor even to childhood. It should be a common good. Shared. Cherished. I claim it as my own!
My actions are those of absorption and repetition: I do not repeat in order to reproduce, but rather to bring about a process of becoming! Whether alone or as part of a group, I establish ritual as a foundation upon which to gently coax forth what lies hidden within us. To activate forces. Through the energy of what connects us, together, this is a way of holding on to the world.
To our ‘oscillating vessels’. Free and powerful.