This work retains an emphasis on ‘stretching’ as a form of symbolic space-making for the confined, violated or otherwise repressed body of the female. In this case, the sweaters presented the artist collected from survivors of sexual violence. Each ‘stretched’ fabric mass reveals within its folds the hald faces of their perpetrators.
For the artist, “the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts”, as each stitched body—the absent female form replaced with the violent masculine gaze--attempts to suggest a force capable of breaking the ugly practices of animalistic behavior (further suggested by the use of goatskins symbolic of sacrifice) to higher consciousness and breaking the molds of the patriarchic gaze.
For the artist, “the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts”, as each stitched body—the absent female form replaced with the violent masculine gaze--attempts to suggest a force capable of breaking the ugly practices of animalistic behavior (further suggested by the use of goatskins symbolic of sacrifice) to higher consciousness and breaking the molds of the patriarchic gaze.
