Inside Body

For my Inside/Outside body piece, I wanted to draw inspiration from the poses of traditional reclining nudes in a way that evokes a similar sense of grace and relaxation, but with a twist of irony in revealing the innards of the figure. In my research, I found many pieces with the theme of inside/outside body, but primarily with a sort of ethereal, magical sense to it. Though I found those types of images striking and beautiful, I wanted to take a different approach. In my image my main aim was to convey relaxation in the figure, as if whatever may be going on in the image is entirely normal to the subject. I wanted to remove the face of the subject in order to strip it of any identity or gender. Though the pose is feminine in nature, the subject is purposefully ambiguous so to allow any viewer to identify with the image. I chose to have the lungs and heart falling out of the figure’s chest cavity because to me, the sight of these particular organs brings me to the thought of motion as in the swelling of lungs through inhalation and exhalation, as well as the heart’s pulsing. I removed any other potential visible skeletal components so to bring the focus of the bone element to the exposed skull. In including the intestines, I aimed to evoke a visceral response from the viewer, and then to juxtapose this against the delicate collaged flowers. Overall, I hoped for the piece to show a slightly shocking version of something like Olympia, through the positioning of the figure. The close crop was to show the visceral nature of the organs, and allow the flowers to be a sprinkling of delicacy in a much different way from the slightly feminine nature of the figure.