Picking: 2019-present
In this body of work, I draw from both my own chronic body struggles
with a recurrent abscess, and its subsequent surgeries and chronic
illness, as well as the somewhat confounding viral interest in online
content such as educational surgery documentation, wellness-related
click-bait pop-ups, and pimple popping videos. Seeking out anonymized
images online is often utilized in order to conceptualize what our own
bodies may be experiencing or have experienced. I argue that what could
be perceived as voyeuristic gawking at the bodily dysfunction and
misfortune of others online can, rather, be a form of coping with and,
eventually, accepting the abject nature of our own bodies. The
popularity of pimple-popping videos can be understood through
recognizing the collective catharsis and visceral reassurance that they,
and media like them, provide viewers that it's normal for bodies to be,
well, gross.
In my Picking series, I explore
the skin as a landscape of evaluation, maintenance, and sometimes,
obsessive and destructive "picking." In my "Picking" assemblage, I have
isolated a number of skin “flaws” that are targeted in skincare rituals
onto separate canvas "grafts," each serving as an isolated bodily
betrayal and source of anxiety and fixation.The dissections of the face
into single zones is intended to highlight the de-familiarizing nature
of scrutinizing oneself in a magnifying mirror. I am rendering the
natural surface of a face as a geography of this self-evaluative space
of beauty and flaws. Such flaws include various pimples, whiteheads, a
blister, blackheads, and a stye (a pimple that occurs on the eyelid.)