ASS PRINTS

These works extend my use of the body as a tool for producing images, where painting emerges through movement rather than representation.

Paint is applied directly onto the body, or onto brushes that have first made contact with it, allowing the canvas to receive a transferred gesture rather than a detached mark. Artist, tool and surface become part of the same process, with each action leaving evidence of physical contact.

The unstretched canvas hangs loosely, closer to skin or cloth than a framed image. It absorbs movement without containing it, accumulating smears, pressure, layering and abrasion. The marks are not illustrations of twerking but physical traces of its rhythm, impact and exertion. Time is registered through what the body leaves behind.

Endurance is central to the work. The sustained physical action draws on histories of Black female labour, in which value has often been extracted through the body’s continuous output. Here, that labour becomes inscription rather than extraction.

The works ask what happens when dance leaves material evidence, and when the body becomes a printing mechanism rather than an image to be represented. They form part of a broader enquiry into the body as archive, where knowledge can be carried through rhythm, repetition and physical trace.