This work was on display at Club of Polish Losers, Berlin from November 22nd until December 6th 2019 and at the Rrriot Festival Vienna 2019 from March 1st until March 8th 2019.
Nobody’s Body is a work that stands for the collective strength, the affirmation of existence, the great emancipation and the spirit of the fluid, feminine form. It calls into question the notion of what is feminine and how this term can be recoined through collective artistic sisterhoods.
In many of our artworks we aim to reconnect to this nature that our queer bodies were claimed not to be part of, through ways of movement, sculptural work and performance. The unnatural and disturbing self we happen to embody. Habitually made to feel less either due to the femininity we lack in some eyes or which we inherited too much of. Made to feel even lesser so for the fluidity that was opened up in us, the queer voice that awakened further along our paths of inferiority. Consequently we turned towards the non-human versatility of earth’s magical shapes and beings – the secret life of fluidity that one can only see with desperate eyes. Within the urban environment, our queer bodies are more often than not forced into a state of constant disassociation. On days of weakness our bodies that speak of queerness and femininity are unable to lift eyes from the pavement, raise our heads toward the tall buildings from which the oppressors’ dark glances stare upon us. We are disconnected and find our sanctuary in our work, the reminder that we are nobody’s body.
We shall not be subordinated to the patriarchal dominance of this society. It is through nature’s mirror that we can perceive ourselves without restrictions – through the fluid gaze of the feminine earth and its non-binary shapes. Through this mirror we shall be empowered to perform the ritual of transitioning into the strong beasts, the relentless bodies of femininity, of queerness, of blackness, of otherness, bodies of strength and endurance. Bodies connecting to other celestial creatures. Bodies, which were dominated and subjugated even before their birth. Who have also been made to feel less of themselves and found their strength within nature and among those other powerful beasts – freeing themselves from the sexist, colonial, homophobic and xenophobic hand around their necks.
The materials chosen in Nobody’s Body act as a threshold between the literary concept and the final representation of the work. It was our intention to use an earthly material such as terra cotta to emphasize the inherently feminine within nature/natural within femininity. The sculpture is formulated through the interplay between the two-fold process of restriction and liberation. The first layer is comprised of wire and plaster to mend the sculpture into a bodily, seemingly dancing, form – these restrictive materials constitute the patriarchal inferiority of womanhood, representing the pains of femininity. The second layer and its materials emphasize the liberation from its underlying structure and its symbolised restraint. Covering the plaster with terra cotta was the fundamental initiation rite of this liberating process - the freeing ritual of applying a protective layer and connecting our sisterhood to earth (a ritual inspired strongly by Ana Mendieta’s Earth Body series) The second stage of this ritual entailed for the feminine and the non-binary/queer to merge onto the surface of the sculpture by blending the curving shapes of the yarn into the mosaic of colourful, expressive beads. This abstraction of bodily form through equivocal materials and process rituals are methods used by us to question the normative concept of the feminine while coincidentally emphasizing the growing wave of progressing identity politics.
Nobody’s Body is a work that stands for the collective strength, the affirmation of existence, the great emancipation and the spirit of the fluid, feminine form. It calls into question the notion of what is feminine and how this term can be recoined through collective artistic sisterhoods.
The female, X, is strong,
is powerful,
is glamorous in its resilience,
its persistence to be, as equal.
To be nobody’s body but one’s own,
self-defined and autonomous.
is powerful,
is glamorous in its resilience,
its persistence to be, as equal.
To be nobody’s body but one’s own,
self-defined and autonomous.
In many of our artworks we aim to reconnect to this nature that our queer bodies were claimed not to be part of, through ways of movement, sculptural work and performance. The unnatural and disturbing self we happen to embody. Habitually made to feel less either due to the femininity we lack in some eyes or which we inherited too much of. Made to feel even lesser so for the fluidity that was opened up in us, the queer voice that awakened further along our paths of inferiority. Consequently we turned towards the non-human versatility of earth’s magical shapes and beings – the secret life of fluidity that one can only see with desperate eyes. Within the urban environment, our queer bodies are more often than not forced into a state of constant disassociation. On days of weakness our bodies that speak of queerness and femininity are unable to lift eyes from the pavement, raise our heads toward the tall buildings from which the oppressors’ dark glances stare upon us. We are disconnected and find our sanctuary in our work, the reminder that we are nobody’s body.
We shall not be subordinated to the patriarchal dominance of this society. It is through nature’s mirror that we can perceive ourselves without restrictions – through the fluid gaze of the feminine earth and its non-binary shapes. Through this mirror we shall be empowered to perform the ritual of transitioning into the strong beasts, the relentless bodies of femininity, of queerness, of blackness, of otherness, bodies of strength and endurance. Bodies connecting to other celestial creatures. Bodies, which were dominated and subjugated even before their birth. Who have also been made to feel less of themselves and found their strength within nature and among those other powerful beasts – freeing themselves from the sexist, colonial, homophobic and xenophobic hand around their necks.
We are nobody’s temple
but our own
We are NOBODY’S BODY
but our beautiful own
but our own
We are NOBODY’S BODY
but our beautiful own
The materials chosen in Nobody’s Body act as a threshold between the literary concept and the final representation of the work. It was our intention to use an earthly material such as terra cotta to emphasize the inherently feminine within nature/natural within femininity. The sculpture is formulated through the interplay between the two-fold process of restriction and liberation. The first layer is comprised of wire and plaster to mend the sculpture into a bodily, seemingly dancing, form – these restrictive materials constitute the patriarchal inferiority of womanhood, representing the pains of femininity. The second layer and its materials emphasize the liberation from its underlying structure and its symbolised restraint. Covering the plaster with terra cotta was the fundamental initiation rite of this liberating process - the freeing ritual of applying a protective layer and connecting our sisterhood to earth (a ritual inspired strongly by Ana Mendieta’s Earth Body series) The second stage of this ritual entailed for the feminine and the non-binary/queer to merge onto the surface of the sculpture by blending the curving shapes of the yarn into the mosaic of colourful, expressive beads. This abstraction of bodily form through equivocal materials and process rituals are methods used by us to question the normative concept of the feminine while coincidentally emphasizing the growing wave of progressing identity politics.
