Annabelle McCall
I speak in collaboration with materials. The objects I made for my thesis project express my personal perspective through their physical qualities. They are material translations of the knowledge I accumulate in my body. Two installation spaces composed of silk, thread, eggshells, cast porcelain, stains, natural fiber paper, and cochineal dye project my embodied perspective into space. I feel compelled to surround myself with materials that resonate with my interior emotional landscape. My body is the tool with which I manipulate raw materials into communicative structures. The materials that fill the installations have bodily allusions culturally embedded within them. My hope is that viewers will feel the objects as a chill on the skin, a tremor in the throat, or an ache in the blood. I am employing material poetics to speak about my experience across Queer / Femme / Trans / Laboring / Surviving communities. This way of working diffuses the center of knowledge through haptic presence.
