My body is a temple under destruction. This idea came from a reflection on my past and a way to accept my past decisions. Making art about hard times in my life helps me better understand and move on from the situation. I show how I was feeling, at times when I wanted to dig my fingers into my skin and rip out my organs to see the inside and my soul and heart. My art does that exactly and displays an evolution of the body being torn apart and through multiple pieces, showing the soul evolving and changing. Because to me, the body is the most important thing. I believe we are all originally pure, but we destroy ourselves, and that is what my art reflects. The body is beautiful and sacred while disgusting and painful. I adore it and all its importance, inside and out. I believe from my religious raising of everyone being sinners in life that when you rip apart my body to see all that's inside, it's just pitch black nothingness. A void of rotten organs and a dirty soul. I convey that by using specific materials, to show my dirty souls and darkness.
I use materials like latex and leather for this. The latex is the outer part of the body, and the leather is the soul. They are seen as more edgy/unusual and associated with more taboo, which goes perfectly with how I try to lean into being a sinner in the eyes of god and even demonic. I like the complexity of the materials and their connection to animals and nature. The leather helps me convey the soul as a more demonic and animalistic spirit, being freed from the body. These materials are also important to me because of the hardships of working with them. Pushing myself, breaking needles, and hand sewing studs into the leather helps the garment have my own soul and hard work embedded into its core.
