Mining Beauty

The present work explores Feminine Beauty and Fashion through “mining” my personal history amongst other source materials. By collecting and combining remembrances of feelings and occurrences, physical documents and materials, I weave a narrative “cloth” linking childhood to the present. The ‘paisley’ motif becomes a metaphor for my own migration. Its evolution, symbolic of mine as a ‘hybridized’ Sri Lankan Canadian. The sewing “toolbox” of measuring tape, pins, buttons, bobbins and fasteners, are re-purposed in the works and also act as metaphor. Within the sewing process a tissue paper pattern is used and discarded. Here it is re-purposed, its transparency and fragility signifying a transitory state. The shapes of the patterns, combined with overlaid imagery allude to the absent body, one that exists in memory.

The Artist as embodied through a “dress” is now feminine subject and object of the artwork. The fashion presented is homespun, often iconic, the female identity presented as a piecing together of events and memory, the gaze inward, the beauty residing in the self-revelation.

Read Gil McElroy’s Article “Freeing the Figure” in Re:Sculpt Magazine