TRANSIENT BODIES

This exhibition expounds upon the fragmented, damaged, and repaired body to demonstrate ideas of transience and resilience despite limitations, pain and trauma. Biological and bodily references are used as a metaphor for growth and transcendence beyond the boundaries of our typical forms. Each of the five artists address their own lived experience or constructed world through their work. 

Lauren Bradshaw utilizes ceramic sculpture in conjunction with fibers and latex to reveal the tension between bodily dichotomies such as hard versus soft or internal versus external. Brooke Day world-builds a narrative surrounding the creatures titled Morphic Vessels of Human Consciousness (Mvohc). These Mvohc are formed from the extensive process of growing Symbiotic Cultures of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY). Jessica Swank is a photographer utilizing self-referential abstract sculpture as a subject to describe the blurring of boundaries between organism, machine, and nature. Heather Baumbach explores the complexity of her relationship with the physical body, skin, and the cloth that covers it while expressing cultural concepts of gender, domesticity, and craft. Theo Trotter creates paper and textile-based wall hangings that reference the trans body as a palimpsest through the marks of transformation and trauma.  Material and process are paramount in each of the works, as physical evidence of labor is intentionally left behind. The bodily textures, both internal and external, evoke provocation in their abject refusal to retain barriers or create borders. 

“Transient Bodies” encourages the breaking of boundaries and highlights the transformations that individuals must endure. These works emphasize the importance of transition, growth, inquiry, and creation. By defying the conventional standards of the body, there is an opportunity to reconcile our potential as humans with what is seemingly definite.