left to right: flesh lump, slink series, flesh lumps
ARTIST STATEMENT
Broadly, my sculptural practice is concerned with the body, and specifically the suffering body. My exhibition beautiful little dead things, 2014, was comprised of a series of sculptures created in response to the lives and deaths of dairy cows, and in particular the slaughter of fetal calves and the use of their skins for the luxury leather ‘slink’. The exhibition consisted of an installation of latex skins; adultforms, babyforms, sacs and screens – slink, and wax fleshforms; bodies in varying states of fragmentation, from the full body to the fleshy lump – fleshlumps
These sculptures reveal a process of traumatic witnessing; they are contradictory objects, with no singular reading, they draw attention to the violence of fragmentation and the precarious nature of empathy. Whilst these objects bear traces of violence, mass-production and dis-assembling; they are torn, flayed, rent and ‘butchered’, each object is also tended to, cared for and completely unique. The tension between violence and care in my work is, I suggest, a consequence of the trauma of witnessing and bearing witness to animal suffering.
My research explores two pivotal themes, firstly the relationship between the figure and empathy within the context of sculpture. Secondly, it examines trauma and witnessing in relation to the suffering animal; the ‘absent referent’. The project draws these concerns together to consider the nexus between empathy, trauma and witnessing as they operate in sculptural practice and the field of animal studies.
VISIT https://lynnmowson.com/