Ex Corpore, Liberata began in 2021 as an effort to step outside the constraints of making work for the body. As a maker of clothing and jewelry, I am accustomed to thinking about fit, wearability, and how objects interact with and appear on the body. In this series, I turned toward sculptural forms—objects not intended to be worn, but still shaped by the body’s presence, absence, and memory.
The earliest works emerged during the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic, using repetition, accumulation, instability, and material transformation to process a disorienting moment. Over time, the series expanded beyond these initial investigations, returning to questions of voice, language, and interior pressure in new ways. Across the series, liberation from the body becomes less an escape than a means of tracing what remains—its structures, its limits, and its persistent return.
Ex Corpore, Liberata – I: Rolling Seven-Day
manipulated aluminum screen, thread
dimensions variable
2021
Comprised of eleven cylindrical forms—one for each month from March 2020 to January 2021—this piece translates the visual language of pandemic data into material form. The aluminum screen is manipulated like fabric, pinched and distorted to echo the rising and unstable trend lines that defined that period.
What begins as a contained, orderly structure becomes increasingly elongated and chaotic. The forms resist resolution, reflecting the cumulative weight and unpredictability of that time.
Ex Corpore, Liberata – II: Dialogs (triptych)
twine (wound, stitched, and felted), copper
dimensions variable
2021
This group of three sculptures explores the material and conceptual possibilities of twine—wound, stitched, disassembled, and reformed through repeated handling. Rooted in processes of accumulation and transformation, the work engages questions of labor, value, and perception.
Individual strands gather into forms that shift between intimate and collective, between delicacy and density. The pieces reflect on the histories embedded in material—its origins, its making, and the systems it carries—while also considering how meaning changes when elements are grouped, multiplied, or isolated.
twine, rubberized paint
twine, free-motion stitching, red stain
twine, felted and formed
Ex Corpore, Liberata – III: Ineffable Longing
layered paper, fabric, yarn, found media, wire, light
dimensions variable
2021
Five suspended cylindrical forms rotate independently, occasionally colliding but never fully aligning. Built from layered remnants—fabric scraps, pattern fragments, magazine text, and painted paper—the surfaces accumulate and obscure meaning.
Text is buried beneath successive layers, replaced by color, texture, and gesture. As the forms move, fragments briefly emerge—partial words, structural elements, traces of process—before disappearing again. The work holds tension between expression and inarticulability, reflecting a moment defined by isolation, dislocation, and the limits of language.
Ex Corpore, Liberata – IV: Life Cycles (triptych)
three-channel video
5:16
2021
This video triptych explores cycles of growth, anticipation, and dissolution through three loosely connected narratives. Seasonal change, insect activity, and tidal movement become parallel systems—repeating, shifting, and resisting control.
Across the three channels, time is experienced as both predictable and unstable. Natural processes unfold alongside human expectation, revealing the limits of observation and intervention, and shaping an understanding of place, memory, and impermanence.
three-channel video with audio
Later Works in the Series
Subsequent works return to the questions that shaped Ex Corpore, Liberata, but from a different vantage point. Where the earlier pieces move away from the body—toward structure, repetition, and material exploration—these later works reintroduce it more directly.
Voice, language, and interior pressure come to the foreground. Forms suggest mouths, skins, and coverings; text emerges, fragments, and is obscured. The tone shifts—from diffuse uncertainty to something more concentrated and intimate—marking a movement from distance toward articulation.
Ex Corpore, Liberata – IV: Screaming Into the Void
mixed media collage, paper, metal armature
dimensions variable
2022
This vessel-like form suggests both containment and release. Its exterior is subdued and skin-like, while the interior is densely layered with saturated imagery—fragmented, compressed, and visually charged.
The work engages the tension between interior experience and outward expression. The form reads as a mouth or cavity, holding what cannot be fully articulated. Image and surface accumulate without resolution, pointing toward the limits of communication and the pressure of unexpressed thought.
Ex Corpore, Liberata – VII: Palimpsest
text, paper, translucent fabric, metal armature
dimensions variable
2023
Constructed from layered text fragments and partially obscured by translucent fabric, this work explores erasure, revision, and the instability of meaning. Words remain visible but unreadable, interrupted by folds, overlaps, and veiling.
The form suggests a body, but one that is covered, softened, and distanced. Language becomes material—subject to layering, concealment, and transformation over time—holding multiple histories at once: what is written, what is hidden, and what persists.
