Stockings are among the most gendered of garments, designed to shape, smooth, and contain the female body. In this series... Read More
Stockings are among the most gendered of garments, designed to shape, smooth, and contain the female body. In this series of four sculptures, each stocking has been coated in natural lacquer, layer by layer, until the material itself holds the form upright. There is no internal structure, no filling. The lacquer alone gives them their rigidity and their presence.
Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity, I understand clothing as a site of identity construction. We live inside our clothes, and in doing so, we perform who we are. Here, that performance is arrested and solidified. What was once sheer, elastic, and skin-close becomes hard, textured, and self-sufficient. Each sculpture carries a different surface: silver, rust, black, encrusted. The same form transformed by the same process, yet each yielding something distinct.
To me, this mirrors how society shapes fluid, adaptable identities into rigid roles, layer by layer, slowly and irreversibly.
