Cocoon, 2021 (Patreon)

New publication just launched! http://shecancookapotatoinherhandandmakeittastelikechocolate.com/19-desktop-bio-and-about.html

Hoarding has always been a heavy topic for me so I decided to use the lightest material available to somehow contradict its weight. Aside from the connection to depression, shame and mental disorders, it is a rich subject for me to explore, for its strange resistance to boundaries between subject/object, too much/too little, value/trash. It chimes in a strange way with the art market's obsession with placing value onto objects. The originals were converted to grayscale for an online context. I'm not a fan of badly replicating irl work for the screen, which is destined to fail. Instead I made a second sibling work that lives online.

Statement:

“A common observation made by therapists [...] is that hoarding is triggered by the death of a parent, child, or marriage, or even by an “empty nest,” (especially in the case of women hoarders)”. -Jane Bennett, “Powers of the Hoard: Further Notes on Material Agency”.

Cocoon, 2021 is a series of watercolours that challenge the relationship between subject and object in relation to hoarding. This is a deeply personal project for me, and the drawings are inspired by lived experience.

A female figure in oppressive home interiors is surrounded by masses of banal objects of little monetary value. Piles of toilet paper are strewn across the floor, objects are fastidiously netted, and the figure lives in harmony with her clutter. Many hoarders have stated that the objects have ‘done it to themselves’, implying an agency of things. Hoarding is often considered shameful, taboo and an illness. Hoarders are deemed freaks on mainstream television, and the complexities are hidden. It is a subject rarely discussed in art despite its object-based fixation.