GRAVIDUS

2020

Mixed media on paper



Gravidus describes a body inside a body; feeling around in the dark for one another.

In 2020 my pregnant body was being pushed to its sculptural potential, and on daily swims I encountered a number of circular objects on the ocean floor which formed the basis of these works.

Mapping their location, learning their outline, making a blind impression and revealing their surface textures on paper; I sought to (un)know these objects. My relationship to them through this paper membrane was a kind of exterior analogue of the interior process I was embroiled in. Forms were physically extracted out of the paper; sometimes delicately; sometimes with force — even rupture.

The series traces a process of latency and anticipation. Gravidus is a meditation on how we are born from water to earth, the vessels that hold our secrets, and what it means to carry deep time within us.