Each wearable sculpture is constructed from a circle of weather-proof fabric with a long tube of lycra at the centre. They hang above the ground from butcher’s hooks attached to long metal chains; the circumference of each costume is marked out on the floor. When the dancers activate them, the costumes become a landscape of morphing forms. Like watching clouds, the transformations shift from human to animal to imaginary entities and unknown beings. When a fragment of flesh reappears momentarily it is suddenly unrecognizable, as if the body has entered the uncanny valley of the nonhuman.

sui generis means ‘unique’ ‘in a class of its own’. Here it’s a way to subvert the ‘taxonomical’ naming systems of scientific classification. The fabric’s fluidity allows the body to evade capture by continuously morphing. The circle is a reference to the Vitruvius Man holding the ‘human’ body fixed within perfect mathematical contours. The fabric that hangs above it like a discarded skin is what releases the body from this trap. Re-imagining the shape-shifting of spiritual and ritual practices, the sculptures become a portal to the magical : by concealing the body, they reveal the hybridity of human and nonhuman forces, and the thin veneer between the realms of the sublime and the abyss of the abject.

Wild Kind, Art Research Event, Goldsmiths University, London 2018; P-Bodies Festival of Contemporary Performance, Leipzig 2017; Emergency MCR 2016, commissioned by Word of Warning Water Tower Art Festival, Bulgaria 2016; Funkhaus, Berlin 2016; Tatwerk, Berlin 2014; Noguchi Room ‘Shin Banraisha‘, commissioned by Hijikata Archive, Keio University, Japan 2013

Sound collaboration: Yosuke Fujita, voice & sound (2013)

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