Unspeakable (I’m Ready)

The examination of attributions to femininity and corresponding body images is an essential part of this work, but not exclusively so. A rope binds the artist’s naked body, which mutates into an erotic object through its deformation. The artist draws on the Japanese art of bondage, “Shibari”, in which the aesthetics are determined by nudity, the rope, and the knot technique. The power imbalance between the artist and the viewer is reinforced in the work by the fact that the black-and-white photographs—five facsimiles of wet collodion photographs—are packaged in a thermoformed box. This is held together with a rubber band and presented for viewing on a sales display. The simultaneity of deformation, eroticisation, aestheticisation, and monetisation of one’s own body are essential features of the work, which can be understood as a metaphor for today’s online culture.