In my work, I explore capturing sensation and feelings in ones body through photography, fiber arts, and more recently, sculpture. My work is meant to be a form of connection between the body and a documentation of traumas. I use multiple mediums because they often involve repeated tasks I can lose myself in. They also allow me to feel different sensations that different mediums allow. Sensations of dryness after working with wood or clay, pricks in my fingers after sewing or embroidery. Chemical nausea coming from developing film. I use making work almost as a journal- I spill out all of my thoughts and feelings into my work because it feels important to me to do so. I collect, sort, and create taxonomies that work together as a whole whether or not they are directly related to one another. I use experience and memory to create works that are not necessarily self portraiture but they are about what I know, small experiences and gestures. An indent on a bed, grass blowing in the wind, evidence, a trace of experience. A mark or indentation of something that once was. My work comes from a place of seeing my own body as something I cannot recognize. Its pushing and pulling, stretching, tearing, bloating. Every indent I make is another lingering impression. For my thesis I used text from online forums on eating disorders. In these spaces, people reveal to each other what they are going through. Using my own body in the images was important to me because when I look at these forums I feel the sensations in my body that they write about in the post, whether or not they directly mention their own bodies. I feel their same panic, tightness, an urge to grab at myself in fear for any sense of relief. I cannot hide from the overwhelming sensations that I feel, I can only work to portray them as best as I know how.

ariellenkov.com /// @aritaylor