A Cloth Over a Birdcage, 2021- 2022

 

'A cloth over a birdcage' is a series of collages that stems from my studies in dance and psychology and a long term interest in the representation of landscape in relationship to emotional and sensorial subjectivities.

 

While in my previous work walking has played a central role as the physical activity that connects my self with the landscape, here I borrow the sensory imagery and somatic principles from my dance practice with the aim of creating images with an embodied quality: I look for textures, play with visual rhythm and punctuation of shape and colour. Emotions and the senses are tightly intertwined and this relationship influences the way we perceive and experience the natural environment. In 'A cloth over a birdcage' I am interested in imagining how emotions can be represented and felt visually. As the title loosely suggests, it’s about the act of looking inward.

 

I keep the process as simple as possible, using glue, scalpel and paper, to allow myself to work freely and intuitively, allowing the pairing of images to originate from sensations rather than ideas. I am drawn to the strength of minimal gestures, peripheral details and unwanted marks apparent in photographs and their ability to evoke a spectrum of emotional states.Through cropping and reframing I created the final collages through a process of subtraction, removing information from the original photographs and allowing some, perhaps overlooked, elements to emerge.