Stephanie Flowers’ work stems from her obscure relationship with the human body. A subject she finds both fascinating and unsettling, her work engages with the uncomfortable qualities of the body’s terrain to create unfamiliar narratives. She strives to create something whole and new from fragments. As a means of coping with the realities of our internal landscapes; cells, organs and more are reinterpreted or invented. With this, her methods of display question the typical ‘head to toe’ vertical approach to medical knowledge that so often compartmentalizes the body. These unconventional depictions of display prompt further examination of how these parts might resemble a new whole, and what the re-imagined body means in a contemporary context.
Her practice is grounded in an exploration towards the sensate body that is articulated and translated through the tactile mediums she works with. These qualities are highlighted through minimal, delicate, bone-like porcelain, often juxtaposed with spindly, wax-coated textiles. The forms are often tethered in ways that recall familiar structures, while returning an intimacy and new understanding towards observing the body.
Stephanie Flowers completed her BFA in Sculpture & Installation at OCAD University in 2013 with a minor in Material Art and Design, where she specialized in Ceramics. She is the recipient of the Ian Carr-Harris Science in Culture Award and the Emanuel Hahn Award for sculpture.
Currently living and working in Toronto, Ontario, Flowers' practice addresses the scientific body on display and its various paradoxes. By translating their poetic and grotesque qualities into minimal forms that are uncanny yet familiar, she hopes to create alternate ways of understanding.
STEPHANIE FLOWERS
Upend, 2014.
Porcelain, rope, wax, pigment, 52 x 5 x 1.5 inches.
