Inversions (The Alps), 2021-ongoing
Photography, Silver Gelatine B+W prints from 5x4 negative and digital files, sizes variable
Inversions (London) started in January 2021 upon the announcement of a further hard lockdown, which effectively curtailed movements and activities once again. Since then, the series has grown beyond its origins in the pandemic but retains crucial visual and conceptual elements born out of the restrictions of that time.
The work articulates my personal relationship to my elected hometown while thinking through the history of feminist performance photography – and specifically the Body Configurations of Valie Export. As in Export’s work, I am interested in speaking to a performative entanglement of female body and often patriarchally authored architectures, thinking through the codifications of built environments and how they act upon modes of behaviour.
Turning myself upside down, defying gravity and touching the ground is a method of mark making through and with the body, drawing a line into the urban landscape, over and over. The series maps the city, both well-known sites and locations, as well as more anonymous yet visually poignant places. It forms subcategories along the way: housing estates, brutalist buildings, museums … or more generally: bridges, tunnels, roofs.
The series is currently ongoing and so far hold close to 200 inversions.
A parallel series is building up in my the mountains, where a the body draws lines into the snow.