Woven Bag, part of a larger practice addressing relational aesthetics, employs deep calm colors, a rhythmic weave structure, and an accumulation of bodily imagery (womb, vagina, mouth) to question the divided self, particularly by exploring the enigmatic phenomenon of sleep. Informed by research on changes in energy distribution during sleep, I attempted to capture the way in which the atonic body (rigidly held in position and without muscle control) becomes a mere shell for the wandering mind of the REM stage sleeper whose visual cortex is rapidly firing to create the dream experience. The fact that the dreaming brain (in stages 2 and 3 of sleep) operates at the same hertz measurements as the waking brain, but without the self-awareness of consciousness, explains why REM sleep is often called paradoxical sleep.
This hand-dyed and woven sculpture evokes the exterior of a sleeping bag molded around the human form, yet when the viewer peers inside this shell, the void is revealed; thus, the form and presentation of the bag refer to the paradoxical nature of dreams characterized by one’s ability to separate wandering mind from rigid body in this unique state of consciousness. Further, the sculpture’s reference to cocoon, body bag, or any sort of containing sack from which the essence of the human form has departed address a frequent inability of these elements to cohere in the human experience.
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