I started to become more interested in creating meat textures rather than a realistic female nude, so I began to mutate the female body, but retaining forms such as the breasts. It is very curvy and retains a meaty look. I was also interested in drawing the audience’s attention to focus more on the visceral, tactile element of the works. I created these sculptures using plaster.
When I think about the “grotesque”, it refers to something deformed, mutated, something monstrous, yet morbidly calm. I recall once seeing a man with a huge lump on his neck and that imagery really intrigued me. I started to play around with the idea of lumps on the body, deforming their hosts, the bodies.
I decided not to paint these two works because I would like to retain a certain rawness. They are titled, “Cysts” and “ Tumors”.
I began obsessively observing people with skin problems, such as acne, and the pimple-sized lumps that grow on the surface of the skin. Hence, I created another work titled “Lesions”. Lesions is a type of condition that appears when there is an infection on or in the skin. In this work, I used plastic pink pearls and small white beads that are commonly used for making necklaces as a representation of the small lumps I observed. Instead of keeping the plaster cast white, I decided to paint the cast the colour as close to the pearls and beads.
“Cysts”, “Tumors” and “Lesions” are presented in a way where it seems as if the body is entrapped in a wood frame. The use of pretty beads was an attempt to give the work a certain attractive, almost kitsch, quality, juxtaposed against the grotesque. At the first glance, the audience might feel disgust, yet tempted to touch it.
I also have this strong dislike for body hair. I hated the idea of hair growing on legs and arms. This is when I started look at human hair and experiment with them. This work is titled “Hypertrichosis” and the work is made out of real human hair on plaster. Hypertrichosis is a term that refers to the abnormal amount of hair growth over the human body, though it is more likely to exhibit itself on a male body rather than a female body.
I experimented with placing hair where it is not normally at, for example, at the nipples, and under the breast. This is the grotesque to me because I am placing a familiar sight, in this case human hair, at places where they should not exist. The media perpetuates the ideal female body to be hairless, which is totally unnatural, and I decided to go to the other spectrum, creating a female body that was hairy, disgusting and abnormal.
While researching on paint textures, I came across a work titled “ Keriah II” done by Anish Kapoor and I was very inspired by the way he depicts meat through texture. He used silicon and resin to create these thick meat like sculptures.
I can’t afford such expensive materials but I found an alternative method to recreate that wonderful thickness and texture, and this was through the use of modelling paste. I started to spread the modelling paste all over these two plaster casts, creating a sense of thickness.
I cover the entire surface with gel wax. Gel wax is a medium that is used to make candles and the reason why I chose this material because of its transparent and jelly-like quality- it reminded me of the fats you find in meat.
Similar to my other sculptures, I want the audiences to be repelled and yet want touch my artworks. Because of the wet and glossy surface, the audience were very curious in knowing whether my works are dry. I am quite happy with the end product as I was able to achieve the result I wanted. Because of the meat-like and the wet, fatty textures, the two plaster casts resemble slabs of meat. I decided to hang these two works from the ceiling in a manner similar to how a butcher would hang meat. Hence, the title of these two works is “Boucheries”, a fancy french word for butchery.
