Communicating the interplay of excess political control and gendered dynamics, the entangled forms in my work abstract the body and its capabilities. Referencing the genre of bodily horror, and its nature of exaggerating the fear of lacking bodily control, my work relates this imagery to ongoing systemic control over reproducing bodies. Permeating a paradoxical allure with abject materials like latex and hair, my work serves as a surrogate for the body and the afflictions of bodily containment. Shedding my skin, repairing wounds, peeling blisters, reducing swelling, picking scabs, and excreting the self, I scratch at the relationship of the body and the structural tendencies they exist in.
These forms challenge the biopolitics of bodies as subordinated vessels of reproduction for collective futures. Drawing from feminist reconfigurations of the body as unregulated potentialities beyond constructed margins, these fabricated anatomies are birthed from the gut and play in the viscera.
- Isabella Covert