Contemporary femininity is full of blurred boundaries, undefined roles, chemical control. I make sculpture out of the parts; there are objects of daily routines that are inherently and historically feminine. Twining's first tea shop was catered to women, and the image of women chatting over tea is omnipresent. For me, tea has always been 'a girl thing,' and I consider the paraphernalia and detritus of tea drinking to be equal to the paraphernalia and detritus of taking the pill. To bring the contemporary topics of sex and reproduction to the table of the historically feminine and sedate tearoom, I combine the contemporary pharmacological ritual object, the birth control pill, with archaic ritual objects like makeup compacts, mirrors, and doilies.
Working with wood, metal, and fire is still not considered as a feminine art, despite that boundary being torn down decades ago by women. I find beautiful balance when something from a man’s world, like a saw blade, is nestled amongst those womanly objects like birth control pills, or pearls and lace. Often precarious, sometimes brutal, the artworks that manifest from these musings remain quaint. They are a fragile and terrifying portrait of what it means to be a woman today, if that can even be defined.
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