Princess

Open Gallery, Nashville, TN—October 5-28

The collection called Princess began as a single sculpture with the prompt of “an effigy of the body”. The collection grew piece by piece until it became a full body, a story, its own being. Princess takes the form of sculptural pieces –some hanging, some resting on chairs– created through by plastering recycled clothing and found fabrics. The sculptures are made in visceral acts of discernment: a deeply personal exploration of my own gender experiences. I reflect on the traditional roles imposed on women and how these roles manifest in everyday life. I use lace collars and doilies, wedding dresses, aprons, and modern pants and shirts and solidify them as they move, preserving the body through its interchangeable exoskeleton. 

The weight of plaster that went into each piece is a reflection of the weight of societal expectations, while the vulnerability of the fabric speaks to the impermanence and unpredictability of identity. Princess is both a personal exploration and a universal statement—a symbol of how we all carry external layers that may define us, but underneath, we remain deeply shaped by the soft, quiet forces that exist within us. Princess is an exoskeleton. But now she is of her own and on her own. Princess has a hard and brittle exterior but a soft core. The two parts have bonded together and exist as one until the end of her existence. Through ten pounds of plaster and one unfortunate destroyed piece, Princess came to be.

Through this collection, I invite viewers to reflect on their own experiences with identity, the roles they inhabit, and the ways in which they, too, are shaped by both external and internal forces. Princess is an invitation to consider the tension between the visible and the invisible, the hard and the soft, and ultimately, the ways in which we all navigate our complex existence in a world full of external expectations.