Fugitive Sheets

Renaissance fugitive sheets consisted of anatomical drawings with paper flaps that viewers lifted to reveal images of internal organs and bones. They are forms at the intersection of art and the natural sciences, of figuration and objectification. Drawing on this history, these abstract fugitive sheets include paper flaps that can be lifted to reveal different compositions. Working with painting and drawing materials I construct intuitive abstract forms inspired by biological imagery: body parts, organs, microscopic views of cells, neural networks, fluids.

They are works about psychological states and memories, illness and disability, mobility and surgery. They are about the opacities and limits of human understanding of bodies. They are works about my own body and experience of illness but also about the collective body in a post-pandemic era. I attempt to conjure what philosophers Deleuze and Guattari called a “body without organs,” or a body in a state of pure potentiality.

Although the origin of the term "fugitive sheet” referred to the fact that the paper flaps would fall off, these works are fugitive in the sense of elusive; they are about the desire to know and the elusiveness of knowledge and embodiment.