Fallen things: delineating veil-wound-womb through sculptural practice

Chambers, Kerry Lee Maria

Fallen things: delineating veil-wound-womb through sculptural practice

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Fallen things is an exhibition of sculptural objects and accompanying text that investigates how the overlapping motifs of veil-wound-womb can articulate fragility and the erotic in sculptural practice. This research draws from Christian iconographic traditions of the contact relic and vera icon, Surrealist object theory, and the generative potential of the matrixial effect to examine how these conceptual and practical motifs manifest in contemporary artistic practices. Using a wide range of source images in the written component and working with casting, carving and assemblage; I explore how gravity, temporal moments of contact, and subtle material juxtapositions cultivate a tactile dialogue between materiality and form. Nestled in the grey area between abstraction and figuration, and drawing on Barbara Baert's analysis of material tensions between cloth and skin, wound and womb, material and psychological; this body of work delineates a sculptural practice that is associative and intuitive, evoking surfaces that hover between exterior and interior.

Keywords

Fine art

Sculptural practice

Reference:

Collections

Masters

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