The Wired Bodies Series

In this series, I explored that relationship on an equally macro and micro scale, where the interior of the body is tied together with the interior hardware of computers. In the pieces, I’ve rendered the body as fleshy, dissected organs with thick layers of paint and colored pencil. There is a subtle physicality to the work that is consistent in my practice and which, I feel, grounds the piece in reality. I find that texture is an important part of my BFA because it is such a contrast to the technology we typically use everyday, which is smooth and flat. That lack of a mess is unnatural to me and how I have come to understand what it is to live as a human being, so in my artwork I engage with a certain messy physicality that you can see hints of in the pieces here.

The works were built up in thick layers of paint and modeling mediums which I then worked back into with colored pencil, as you can see in the video to the right. The colored pencil on top of the already rough surface added another element of texture and physicality that we don’t experience every day over screens.

This series was created to resemble petri dishes. I wanted to describe technology has a self-propagating, organic thing. I was also thinking about how far out of control synthetic, toxic materials that we have been endlessly producing are. The dishes are beautiful and colorful, but simultaneously disgusting and unnerving.