Historically, sculpture has been a medium of conversion charged with the metaphorical meaning of metamorphosis. Linking the process of artistic expression with the identity of the artist, work offers an exploration on themes of communication and understanding. Interested in the perception of the immaterial while referring to the relationship between personal and public, creator and audience, I examine internal body space and ways to visualise the inside.
Trying to sculpt psychological space and give form to what is formless, I fill my mouth with a mass of clay in order to solidify internal emptiness. Inverting private to public, I consider an analogy of revealing my intimate and personal space, giving at the same time solidity and shape to the void. Squeezed into the mass and leaving the imprint of mouth’s interior, inverted forms are casted as observable artefacts. Working with negative space and examining the vacuity within, I relate this action to the concept of ‘artist’s voice’. As such, volume of air becomes a sculptural piece, giving the impression of a ‘pacifier’ suggestive of an artist with no voice. By stuffing my mouth with dirt, the negative form fills and seals it as a representation of a ‘mute identity’.
As a way to formalise and formulate the pieces, lime wood plinths link the acidulous nature of lime with the mouth acids. Gold coating assigns extra value to dirt: Silence is golden. Unknown symbols and letters that can’t be read or spoken acknowledge the limitations of language and failure of words. By inverting and exposing inside out without being further prescriptive, surfaces with implied human connection turn out to be illegible abstractions.