Boundary Creatures and Other Monsters

“What is most regulated in any culture is the body, particularly women’s bodies… Even centuries before the term emerged, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle advanced the influential argument that a woman’s body is monstrous by nature, a deviation from that of the normative male...”

- Francis Connelly, The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture (2012)

In my sculptures and installations I claim the female body as my raw material - tearing it apart and rebuilding it as a way to find power, autonomy, and dark magic in its inherent otherness.

My installation for Terminal 136 acts as a kind of feminist temple. The gallery contains a number of altars, each one host to what historian Francis Connelly calls “Boundary Creatures,” grotesque monsters that “roam the borderland of all that is familiar and conventional.” Akin to a kind of Stations of the Cross, where Christians meditate on the suffering and transformation of Christ on his way to crucifixion, each altar offers a place to contemplate the surreal materiality of the female form, one which has been ruined, sacrificed, and reinvented throughout the course of history.

While each Boundary Creature contains something familiar (hands, limbs, genitalia) they carry within them a monstrous potential. They are rotten little fruits; whole yet misshapen, sweet but toxic.

As a collection, these forms aim to remind us of the malleability of our flesh and find in this examination a sense of pleasure, power, and terror in our capacity for ruin. A feeling women are all too familiar with.

Join me for the opening of this work!

Opening Reception: Friday, July 5, 6pm - 9pm
On view July 5 to July 20th, 2019

Boundary Creatures
UTSA Terminal 136
136 Blue Star St.
San Antonio, TX 78204

Hours: Thursday - Saturday, noon to 5pm