Shifters

These works are inspired by moments of transition, both in my own life and in stories drawn from global mythologies. In many myths, women transform and never return to the same form or the same place from which they began. While the hero often returns triumphant with a token from his trials, the heroine becomes something else. She becomes a bird, like Leda; a river, like the Nigerian princess who escaped her husband; smoke; or simply the story of a woman who never returned. Their departures are not framed as conquest, but as metamorphosis, liberation, or loss. What does it mean to fly, not to return, and to exist in that threshold between the domestic and the transcendent?

Drawing from my own life, I use writing to reflect on the moments these sculptures retell. Excerpts from these writings appear alongside selected works.

The use of bedsheets is significant. Although my work centres on the body, I use domestic fabrics and construction materials as a nod to my familial lineage of builders, tradespeople, cleaners, and maids. These materials are common both in their familiarity and in their association with class and labour. They absorb the traces of our lives, become marked with oils, blood, sweat, and skin cells. They collect the substances our bodies shed as we move through both conscious and subconscious experience. Foam becomes flesh, oozing and vulnerable, while plaster captures frozen gestures. Some works are stained with wine, referencing rituals of service and sacrifice found in both mythological narratives and domestic life.