Date of Submission

Spring 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Kenji Fujita

Abstract/Artist's Statement

With each day of isolation, I delve further into myself, along with a mild dissociation from reality and self as formed in relation to others and gaze. The majority of this time is spent without seeing a full body; when a body is alone, there is no one to see it in its entirety. I can’t be sure what my body looks like, so I must choose a body because passivity leads to invisibility. I have been looking for a body that encapsulates a multiplicity of self and dynamic spirit, the kind I could fall in love with. When two bodies touch, they so often hurt each other. I want to explore the experience of touching myself or touching by myself, emboldening a self-sustaining self.

I reject the form I was given because it cannot look how I feel. There’s a disconnect in the mirror and voyeur from what is reflected back to me. I can’t love a self who is not honest and my human form has dishonest obligations to rules and order. My insides are highly irregular. Be it my heart, brain, or bowels, it often feels there is no rhyme, reason or reality to my internal landscape. In order to understand it, I must externalize it onto a body that is new and defies all the forces that makes me desirable or undesirable in the outside world, the false truth of self-worth. But there is no need to limit myself to one body…

I encountered a slug in the fall and it made my eyes sting with tears. Its sumptuous, glossy body clung relentlessly to a blade of grass, moving like molasses, inspiring a feeling of tenacity and self-assurance that made me happy and sad all at once. I don’t understand why people are afraid of bugs or find them gross. I often feel gross, lazy and sluggish. I loathe myself for it and tie my alienation from old friends and lovers either fundamentally or inadvertently to their repulsion towards me; towards what’s dysfunctionally trapped inside, ambivalently sabotaging the outer shell. I want to be healthy in every capacity, but I challenge myself to retain autonomy in solitude, cautious not to squash sluggish characteristics just to be desired by an outside body. When I’m alone, I’m alone, and I can stew in my juices and endlessly orgasm. And I would rather sacrifice touch than myself. In my fantasy I create fantastical science and in my fantasy slugs have sex with themselves and I am a slug.

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