What Will the Worms Think of Me?
What Will the Worms Think of Me? is a body of work that explores the abject through the lens of the shifting perspectives between childhood and adulthood and asks the viewer to approach the grotesque with a new perspective that is separate from the narratives that we learn growing up. By way of material explorations, themes such as abjection, childhood, gender and femininity are entwined together, creating a visceral reminder of the body and our lack of permanence in the world.
Inspired by 20th century feminist artists and abjection theory; the work questions why we feel repulsed by grotesque subjects. Abjection is built on the premise that it is the reaction, or feeling, that protects you from the breakdown in the boundaries of your sense of self.
My practice uses this notion and approaches it softly, allowing the abject to exist in a space that makes it less threatening to our own boundaries. Taking from the in-betweens, and the things that are nearly ‘uncategorizable,’ such as the worm, my work questions how they threaten us and why we feel threatened.
The work is made up of thirteen large soft sculpture worms, alongside a zine that viewers are able to take away afterwards (FIG 1). Varying from 8-12 feet long, the worms are shown in a variety of bruise-like colours while tangling together to mimic intestines and other bodily reminders. The worms themselves contain a wire to allow for easy posing, and a number of small stones and pebbles to weigh them down. The weight of the worms is reminiscent of the themes that it carries; unnoticeable at first but realized with more time spent with them. The zine is meant to contextualize the work, its numbers slowly diminishing as the viewer consumes the work; much like how the worms will eventually consume our bodies.
