Victoria J. Hunt
Introspective Bodies
“The state is a machine to fabricate the truth of body and gender, and I am a beggar.”
Paradox and grotesqueness are intrinsic to the female condition. Introspective Bodies is a sculptural installation that reflects on the nuanced ontological position of the female and her body, in relation to a male-led social order. In this artwork, I look to the digital landscape as a site for self-erasure and the subsequent elimination of systemic othering.
“[The Cyborg] transgresses fixities of individual identity, protrudes and extends beyond multiple categories and classifications.”
A cyborg-esque body reclines against a mattress draped with pink satin sheets. Her dark hair – mimicking my own – fans out in a grotesque juxtaposition to the ethereal pink. She internally reflects on her own polarizing ontological position, her ruminations broadcast through a vinyl-wrapped box TV. Her gaze, directed at the TV in longing, is unwavering.
Within the intangible matrix, homogenous understandings of the corporeal body disintegrate; it is the landscape in which the Female Other is liberated from her taxonomy, and granted bodily autonomy.
2B, in her grotesque and polarizing nature, exemplifies the natural body's pursuit of taxonomical liberation. Still maintaining an identifiable humanoid form, she is an entity in the midst of her own ontological growth and transcendence.
The cyborg, the bed, the lamp, and the TV are all bodies. Their mere existence and presence birth an ecology in which they all share a relationship and serve a hierarchical function, mimicking our own social order.
Introspective Bodies is a seam in the fabric of society through which one is invited to look, and ambivalently so. You are invited to look both inward and outward, simultaneously.
