Fragment: Reclaimed
In our current paradigm, women are pushed to incise and discard certain aspects of their identity and human experience.
This project aims to reclaim the rejected and “unacceptable”, enshrining the imperfect as a vital part of the whole.
Fragment: Reclaimed uses the geometries of painter Wifredo Lam as a frame to explore the
potential of the unusual forms left behind the in the fabric cutting process. Lam's work tenses
classical portraiture with the unbridled strangeness, ferocity, and perversion of its
subjects. The display of these competing elements coexist without need to synthesize,
sweeten, or excuse the other. Fundamentally, it is a representation of a future, fully intact
being - derived from the ancient paradox of the ferocity and tenderness of woman and
mother, both lionness and nurterer.
As power over feminine bodies is wrested from their owners and our earth is
ravaged, it seems an apt time to recognize the full capacities for creation or
destruction from anything that can be called “mother.”
This collection speaks to the fear and necessity of the self-pollinating femme
fatale, representing man as much as woman, and wholeness as much as
abyss.
