Communicating the interplay of excess political control and gendered dynamics, the entangled forms in my work dematerialize and abstract the body and its capabilities. Referencing the genre of bodily horror, and its nature of dismantling the boundaries of autonomy and ownership, my work relates this imagery to ongoing systemic control over reproducing bodies. Paintings extend the elasticity of flesh in vibrant masses that ooze the rawness of muscle and meat. Sculptural work physically dismembers and rearranges the body and its insides, physically birthing and reproducing from past work across disciplines. Grotesque soft sculpture pieces permeate a paradoxical allure with abject materials like latex and hair.
Existing within a space of external reality and internal experience, my work explores the relationship of the body and the structural tendencies they exist in. These forms challenge the cyclical notion of women as subordinated vessels of reproduction for collective futures. My work serves as a current zeitgeist, showing personal narratives that speak to the greater collective. These fabricated anatomies act as a dissection of the connection between the inhuman, biopolitics, and gendered social relations.
- Isabella Covert