Alicia Ross “The Distress of Uncertainty”

Black & White Gallery / Project Space

[Image: Alicia Ross "Succumb" (2016) Fiber.]

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“The Distress of Uncertainty” series explores themes of neurosis relating to the physical body and its connection to identity and sexuality. Conflict between external societal pressures and internal dialog, visually manifest into deconstructed female nude figures made up of thread and fabric. A skin-toned palette of stitched fibers presented on canvas embraces an intersection between hand-made domestic object and figurative painting.

Individual female nude images are curated from online locales and then translated into embroideries comprised of stitches resembling skin, veins and tissue. Removed from their original context, these dislocated bodies are manipulated and abstracted into various states of fragmentation.

In what are reminiscent of provocative poses, bodies open and divide giving way to a more dissected view of the body. The abstracted female forms made up of thread and fibers are supported, not only by the figures’ arms and hands, but also by isolated threads reading as “connective tissue” between masses. The line is blurred between bodies that struggle to hold themselves together and ones that depict the reconstruction of one’s self.

The distressed and fragmented appearance of the embroidered female forms materializes pressures placed on the physical body, and thus explores the resulting complexes from those competing internal and external strains.