"Below the Mantle"
to
"Natural History I"
Jill Ho-You, "Natural History I".
Below the Mantle by Jill Ho-You
Artist Statement
Memory and its dynamic connection to identity and corporeality inform my artistic practice and corresponding research. Through printmaking and drawing, I endeavor to access the physical manifestations of past experience, building on detailed anatomical studies of the human body in the process.
In what ways are personal memories, emotions and cognition expressed through the physicality of the body? Genetics has shown that certain childhood experiences leave permanent marks upon an individual’s genome by altering gene expression. Physical anthropology has long demonstrated that organs, teeth and bones record events such as disease and trauma. Therefore the physical body retains traces of memory at the tissue, cell and molecular levels. My work draws insights from these visceral observations and speculates on the sticky set of relations between our identities, flesh and memory.
I have explored this intimate relationship in a variety of formal and conceptual ways. My practice has evolved to mix external, readily identifiable references of the body with the often abstract language of science and medical imagery. Multiple marks, images and textures are woven in ways suggestive of the passage of time and the disordered accumulation of experience and sensation. Layers of drawing are combined with intaglio techniques building images which are tangible and ephemeral, physiological and psychological. By connecting the temporal with the physical, I am also playing with the fragile tension between life and mortality, permanence and impermanence.
Opening Reception Sat July 25th 6-8pm
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