Depicting occurrences of when one is physically present compared to its absence and what happens when traces of identity are visible, removed, fragmented, or left behind is key to my art practice. Incorporating anonymous and gestural anti-portraits along with distortions of what we consider the norm of the human anatomical structure. Nebulous figurative forms testing body’s boundaries through representations of human minimality and are anonymous on what or whom they represent, yet there universally representative.

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Shedding, stretched, sewn representational skins and literal material of human hair contains a life of its own within my artworks. ‘Breathing’ within its surroundings, despite not containing visible functional organs similar to our anatomical structures. My sculptures react to its external environments, similar occurrences to our bodies reactions towards the surrounding society. Through combinations of literal materials from the living body, natural materials and contrasting these to man-made materials such as self-hardening gel are key to my art practice representing textures and qualities of the human body through sculpture and drawing. 

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Symbolising strength and virility, human properties are concentrated in his or her hair. According to myths, it is an external soul from our head, hair grown on the body meant irrational powers, yet dishevelled hair signalled bereavement. Hair is the second strongest natural material, yet its meaning changes once its cut, shed, or removed. Once its discarded, repulsion occurs. A strand represents a fragile state. Used as an external sculptural element curling and lying on top of the page, it reacts to its surroundings, or its immersed through thin layers of vellum. With diffused lights, tones of my representational flesh appear through the paper. Using different thicknesses of the vellum, effects vary with these intertwined nebulous figures whether through graphite pencil and hair or light flesh coloured blushes of watercolour lying underneath the sewn hair compositions. Adding hundreds of thin strands blur and consume the compositions till parts of the body are recognisable, the hair itself is fragile heightening the figure’s fragile state as it is hidden among itself.    

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My sculptures are curled inwards among its ‘skin’. Drops of water run down its exterior and hair representing the moisture of our bodies. Containing scars, blotches, wrinkles are on these limp overstretched skins. Growth of hair seeping through yet its pierced ‘skin’ confronts the audience. I aim for audiences to become unnerved through the stretch skins or repulsed by the sculptural element of sewn hairs blurring the compositions of the drawings. A shedding of one’s former self, acts of human desquamation or animals ecdysis process, traces one’s self is left behind confronting the audience.

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The contemporary art world contains no set boundaries on portrayals of the body. Combining limitless boundaries of contemporary figurative sculptures along with my influences of contemporary figurative sculptors such as Ivana Basic, Bogdan Rata and Berlinde De Bruyckere, my works aims to combine the literal and the representational of human anatomical structure challenging what we accept may or may not as the norm, which is featured in contemporary topics in society.

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“It is our handicap that we are unable to perceive anything that differs from the normalized body as something that is whole. Society has constructed our mindset so that we can only perceive a normalized body as a full body. Everything that is more or less than that is deformed. It is abnormal, and therefore insufficient, in a way. And really, the body in society is controlled.” (Ivana Basic, (Dis)figurative Art: Ivana Basic on the Socially Constructed Body, 2016)

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I aim to challenge my audiences with my artwork’s presence of familiarity yet unfamiliarity to our anatomical structures. We are more than our bodies, the concept of our bodies proceeding beyond our notions, knowledge, and understandings as we know it to be.