Tobey Sharp Studio

In my piece Coded I wanted to tackle personal ideas connecting the body to machinery, and through that our ideas and preconceived notions about both. I used two different mechanisms to deliver this idea. One was the aspect that is most apparent which is the fact this piece is a collage; second is that the shape is a mobius strip. I chose the mobius strip as my vessel as it is a shape that has neither an end, beginning, one side or another. It is simultaneously both and neither of two things in a three dimensional space and is a beautiful phenomenon that is perfect for connecting two incredibly opposing ideas. Collaging this piece is a harder choice to put into words, aesthetically I wanted to have a certain air around the piece, and use items that were already in my possession collected through many months of scouring secondhand sources for ephemera. The specificities of such are an amalgamation of mismatched trash that is both my own and that from other people. Old broken items that are now unloved as they do not serve a purpose anymore, as well as perfectly good materials discarded as they have now become obsolete or out of fashion. 

The body as a concept and actual physical entity that I inhabit has been a source of discomfort for a long while. It connects both to our modern synthetic world and that of the earth and nature where it was first fashioned. Seeing the similarities between how we’ve modeled the artificial bodies and minds to mimic our own has inspired this work. Because looking objectively, how different are they? How thin and blurred will the line become, and already is? I used this collage to abstract the body and recreate it in a splintered fashion, abstracting it until there are only a few key features discernable within the piece. 

Kurt Schwitters was an unexpected source of inspiration. I was really only looking for visual sources to help with the composition of my collage but he seems to also share my ideological sentiments as well. He was quoted to have said, “In the war [at the machine factory at Wülfen] I discovered my love for the wheel and realized that machines are abstractions of the human spirit”. It makes sense that we would make our creations in our own image, yet many people still feel this alienation of the inorganic. Deborah Kelly is another artist I took visual inspiration from. Her work lies more in the classic style of collage that one may think of – a 60s futurism aesthetic. However, her work also has many similarities to Fridah Kahlo, and distorts the body into creatures wholly her own. Both these artists visually helped me compose my piece as visual inspiration for my composition.