Porcupine Corset
Porcupine Corset
birch bark, quills, lace, cord, thread, corset hardware
15"x12"x16"
Created through the act of skinning and gathering bark from birch trees, the corsets are the embodiment of nature represented in the human form. I see these works as a way that I can enter the forest in the same way that I do while collecting the materials in the initial stages of their conception as well as enter into a landscape representative of my childhood home in rural Alberta.
Through the rigorous process of gathering, reforming and attaching these materials to create the female form, I celebrate their beauty through my domination and subjugation of the material as well as draw parallels to the hierarchal structures which exist within the male female relationship. Through this labor , I try to pay tribute to the traditional male female roles present in my family history, while also drawing parallels to how the female role has been constrained by cultural hierarchies despite her considerable and more central position as it relates to the natural world.
In this piece, I wanted to embellish the corset to exhibit its function as both clothing and cultural restraint. Through the use and orientation of the quills, I intend the viewer to move between seeing the quills as representative of the creature itself and of the human cultural realm, a realm reflected through craft practices as well as costume. These methods, in combination with the skinned bark serve to exhibit that the quills have lost their original purpose in favour of another.
The quills and tree transformed into the corset epitomize the relationship which I see existing between human culture and the natural realm, a relationship which both celebrates and subjugates nature, which reveres and binds, all in the attempt to define the human.