G(r)azing on flesh looks at the work of Carolyn McKenzie-Craig and Heidi Stevens. Both artists are invested in the gendered bodily experience within contemporary society. McKenzie-Craig investigates the potential for a gendered self free from social constraints whilst Stevens’ pursues an exclusively female symbolic order.
The exhibition at The Hold presents a dialogue between McKenzie-Craig and Stevens’ work whom both utilize the body to find new gesture and posing that push against existing coercive regimes of social expression, although with vastly different thematic desires.
Carolyn Mckenzie-Craig practice deconstructs notions of normalcy that are imposed on the social body and played out in personal space. Through investigation of the origins of stereotyping McKenzie-Craig uses performance to show how these are imposed on the individual through the language and gesture.
Heidi Stevens practices within the traditions of constructed photography and body performance. Using materiality of fabric and sensuality to examine the internal dialogue. Psychological trauma is pursued and replayed in the silent spaces of Stevens’ work. Refusing the dominant social structures, Stevens’ work escapes to the void, building a space to invert norms of female sexual passivity. Where each work is taken to re-arrange imposed identity and express the psychological.
