“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself, sees, holds things in a circle around itself, things are an annex or prolongation of itself; they are encrusted into its flesh, they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same stuff as the body.”
'Her' body form is based on the ornamental form of the paisley tear drop shape or Boteh. An ‘Eastern’ form. I use ornamental forms like the arabesque, curvilinear forms, whiplash and serpentine lines, to create an alternative visual language for the female body. I feel the interior of my own body as an ornamental visceral map of patterns, a topography of forces, tensions, temperature, pressure, sounds, vibrations, hypersensitivity, emptiness, spaces and tactile surfaces. This ever changing map of the body is imprinted in the mind and is born of a sensual affective engagement of our bodies with a material world of other 'bodies'. Forces of cultural, social and religious expectations mark and carve out our bodies. A kind of pain etched out, drawn onto the interior of the body, mapping zones of traumas, of expectations, of loss, but also of sensuality and feeling.
