MATERIAL FOUNDATIONS

2012–2015

This grouping marks a shift toward explicit engagement with biological concepts, narrative systems, and material processes, introducing questions of growth, pathology, and the instability of the body at the level of tissue and development.

With TERATOMA (2012), The Ossificatorium (2013–2014), and Klondike Osteobiographies (2015), the body is approached as a process that can proliferate, mutate, fragment, and be reconstituted across material, narrative, and spatial systems. These works integrate biomaterials, speculative storytelling, and distributed forms of encounter, moving between gallery, public space, and digital environments. Together, they establish a transition from object-based practice toward systems thinking and para-scientific worldbuilding, forming the conceptual foundation for later work in biofabrication and feminist technoscience.

2009-ONGOING

ALMA is a rogue taxidermy sculpture that interrogates the cultural construction of female autonomy, hybridity, and sexuality through processes of worship, demonization, and myth-making. Composed of human hair, animal remains, and found materials, the figure exists as a speculative body assembled from fragments of the human and more-than-human. Initially encountered in gallery settings, ALMA later exploded into digital culture notoriety, where it circulated widely and unpredictably. The work went viral in 2012, generating over 6 million views within a few days, hitting the top front page post on reddit, and re-emerged in 2015. During this process, online audiences collectively named the figure “Hoof Hand,” transforming it into a distributed, participatory identity. ALMA operates across physical and networked contexts, exemplifying how bodies become culturally animated through circulation, projection, and collective authorship.

 

Materials: Human hair, found wig, recycled Persian lamb coat, beaver fur, rabbit fur, mink fur, raffia, goat skin, acrylic paint, gold leaf, beeswax, deer hoof, moose teeth, taxidermy epoxy putty, found vintage mannequin
Dimensions: 69 x 33 x 24 inches (and web-based iterations)

2010

HOMME FATALE is a mixed-media sculptural work that reconfigures the body as a constructed, hybrid assembly of human and animal materials. Incorporating a black bear jaw, human hair, fur, and wax-cast facial elements, the work disrupts conventional representations of masculinity by rendering the male form as vulnerable, its characteristics built rather than innate.

Drawing on traditions of taxidermy and figurative display, the sculpture occupies a space between artifact and body, where identity is neither fixed nor naturalized, but produced through processes of assembly, substitution, and projection. Inverting the trope of the “femme fatale,” HOMME FATALE proposes a destabilized masculine subject shaped by the same forces of myth, desire, and symbolic construction. Developed in parallel to ALMA, the work operates as a counterpart figure, extending an ongoing investigation into gendered embodiment, hybridity, and the fabrication of lifelike forms.

 

Materials: Black bear jaw, human hair, recycled fur, fabric, beeswax, wax-cast face and ear, found mannequin stand
Dimensions: 52 x 18 x 13.5 inches

2005-2009

This grouping of works, including CONTAGION POPPETS (2005), MY PRETTIES (2007–2008), and SALMONIDAE HISPIDUS (2009) develops an early investigation into the construction of hybrid, quasi-living forms through assemblage. Working with human hair, animal remains, and found materials, these projects engage themes of contagion, taxonomy, superstition, and the unstable boundary between artifact and organism.

Across these works, bodies are multiple, distributed, and materially constructed. Drawing on folk practices, pseudo-scientific classification, and speculative fabrication, this period explores how matter can be pieced together from disparate parts, animated, and made to signify as life, laying the groundwork for later investigations into synthetic anatomies and biofabrication.

2005

CLEW is a large-scale textile installation constructed from handspun human hair and fibre-based techniques including knotting, netting, rope-making, and knitting. Drawing on maritime histories, storytelling traditions, and mythic archetypes, the work explores the entanglement of language, labour, and the body. Structured through acts of binding, looping, and accumulation, CLEW treats textile as a medium through which identity, memory, and desire are embedded and transmitted. The use of human hair situates the body within these structures, generating a sense of presence, absence, and intimacy into the work’s material form.

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Materials: Handspun human hair, beeswax, handspun merino wool/human hair blend, found rocks, antique wooden netting shuttle, antique pulley.

2001-2003

FEMILIAR marks an early investigation into the body as a material and cultural site, explored through textile practices and the use of human hair and menstrual blood. Engaging themes of femininity, sexuality, taboo, and domestic labour, the work situates the body within systems of cultural encoding and symbolic meaning. Through garments, domestic objects, and fibre-based constructions, textile functions as a form of language through which identity is constructed, regulated, and reimagined. Drawing on myth, folklore, and lived experience, these works examine how bodies are shaped through both material practices and inherited narratives.

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Materials: Human hair, menstrual blood, silk, cotton, wool, tulle, raffia, steel, found garments and textiles, thread, embroidery, domestic objects, pie crust, vintage materials.