Tender Flesh

This body of work is about my experience of living in an aging female body. When I was 29, I found a lump in my right breast. Dense breast tissue and fibroadenomas run in my family, though I did not know that at the time. I stood in my apartment pressing and pressing into my body, trying to find and understand the piece of tissue that should not be there. It was terrifying to find, leaving me with a sense of uncertainty and betrayal. How can I be so intimately connected to my body and still be surprised by it?

I made this work after my first mammogram. Seeing the little lump is a very different experience from feeling it. The images are not intimate, vague, or uncertain, but sterile, semi-public, and very clear. To the technician pushing and pulling my body into position, I was just one out of many she would see that day. I chose to work with fabric because it is as much a part of who I am as my genetic makeup. I was taught to sew and crochet by my maternal grandmother. I created soft sculptures of cyanotype prints to replicate the sensation of pushing into flesh. I wanted these pieces to be touchable, tactile, inviting, and unsettling. With a little distance, my body isn’t frightening but human and fragile, and I can better empathize with it. The photo intaglio prints serve as a foil for the textiles. There is nothing intimate about them, other than I know they are mine. These pieces helped me find some stability in a time when I felt very uncertain, allowing me to be vulnerable with others who were experiencing similar issues.