Undressing Innocence explores the shifting boundary between naked and nude, between revealing the body and revealing the self. Through performance, textile and poetry, these works question how we look at, understand and objectify the naked body, and what it means to truly uncover oneself.
Undress
Undress
Undress me
Layer by layer
Little piles fall to the floor
The elements I choose
Choose as my image
My form
A form in which I showcase myself
To the outside
Another piece drops
Shed, Shed
Shed it all
Uncovering more and more
But, am I truly revealing myself?
Or only exhibiting a different form?
Do you feel closer to me?
With every increasing inch of bare skin
Showing you what lies beneath
Yet, not within.
An embroidered photographic series from a video installation in which I slowly undress while reciting poems about nudity and the body. Stitch by stitch, the images redress the naked body, confronting the shifting boundary between naked and covered, personal and impersonal.
paper, thread, tape
The Nipple Shirt plays with the fine line between dressed and undressed, using felted nipples to create a reaction in the viewer. The work asks where nakedness becomes nudity, and where looking becomes objectifying.
felt, silk, thread, model
Poem Projected on semi nude model
Shedding these things
These clothes that have become part of me
Have we truly merged?
Are we now one?
Yet I feel more free
Free away from you
As I stand here
With nothing to cover me
This is what I am
A body
A body of flesh
I can feel every sensation
Tingling on my flesh
More heightened
More alive, more real
I do not feel the need to conceal
Concealing what we all share