In this body of work, Flesh and Mud Project, I am challenging representation that can make people

uncomfortable by being vulnerable with my body. Through video, handmade paper, and the process

of making body casts, I embrace manipulating the image of my body to create monstrous or mythical

hybrids to reflect the experience of being “othered” and living in a state of hyper awareness around gendered

visibility.

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The full bodily engagement, use of natural plant fibers, and meditative process inherent to hand papermaking

becomes a means of surrendering to the natural environment and functions as a self-healing and

liberating process to mediate the frustration and rage of being “unseen” in everyday life. My

work acknowledges the internal effort put into that experience to find peace and comfort within

the self through the process of making paper. At the same time, I categorize my usage of

hybridity and unsettling bodily forms as an external, public method of processing negative

experience. Therefore, this body of work blends the external and internal response to defying

gender conformity: calling attention to the arbitrary yet confining structures around bodily

normativity while simultaneously working in a process that functions as a ritualized act of

healing and ownership of the body in communion with nature. 

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The physicality of making paper and sculptural body casts demands an intentional awareness and

exploration of the body that confronts the uncomfortable and the intimate. In these processes of

making, my body and handmade paper become a vessel for expressing a nonbinary transgender

experience and radical reclamation of the self.