Flaying body

Flaying Body (Quarantine), mixed media (collage, pen, black paint, frottage, watercolour), 2020

Process:

1. Preparing surfaces: I prepared surfaces for paintings by covering mesh wire with paper-machè, which will become ‘sculpture-drawings’.

2. Frottage: To develop my piece, I created 'frottages' of the surfaces of my house, which is representative of our being more in contact with our surroundings in the present situation of quarantine. Our relationship with the place we live in takes on new meaning: I intend to express the idea that these surrounding surfaces become embedded in our skin, expressing how we experience everyday surfaces. Surfaces included pavement, kithen table, tables, walls, curtains, holes

 

3. Drawing over: Drawing a figure on the surface with the frottage technique

The idea of using Frottage was inspired by Andrea Mastrovito's new project, who also used this technique recently to express the strong bond with our homes, responding to the quarantine situation. 

Andrea Mastrovito, Feld Der Wunder (detail), 2020 (https://www.arte.it/calendario-arte/venezia/mostra-andrea-mastrovito-la-diseducazione-al-reale-66559)

4: Adding paper: I added pieces of paper with other frottages that go out of the surface of the piece. The skin is flaying and reaching out of the body, the image is invading the exterior space.

5. Final piece: In the final decision I changed the shapes of the frottages into more organic forms that give a more dynamic and varied look, as if the internal visceral organs have invaded the external flesh of the figure.

 

Experimenting in small

I experimented with the paper fold out book by making tiny harmonica books depicting 'carved' bodies- internal and external. In this way I was able to make many pieces quickly to experiment with materiality, gestures and the body