Treefingers

Treefingers explores discipline, disguise, nature and embodiment. In this self-portrait, a black latex hood encases the artist’s head and an oral surgical device holds his lips open. The hood and oral retractor are symbols of discipline and control. The hood deprives the body of its senses, acting as a form of disguise and transformation. The oral retractor opens the body for inspection, rendering the body subject to external forces. A vein-like spray of white branches is clutched in his arms like a crystalline bouquet or frozen breath. The branches come from the flower stalk, or reproductive organ, of a palm tree. Visceral, ambiguous and poetic, the transformation of the artist’s body through fictional selves opens up a space for new identities to come into being, and explores the passage between perceptual and physical thresholds of the body.