Autoportrait ( Self-portrait ), 2021
Vegan leather, upholstery foam, wood panels, buttons, hinges.

184 x 226 x 8 cm.
Double sided buttoned folding panels.

Beneath its soft candy-like appearance, ‘Autoportrait’ is a penis-shaped sculpture representing my art practice as an art therapy in the form of folding screens with its association to domestic life - especially the intimacy of the bedroom which is often the site of conception, life and death. The erected state of the piece emphasizes its free standing phallic shape as a contemporary totem of sexuality and fertility found in ancient civilizations. This work refers to personal past traumas inflected in the bedroom while suffering from sex addiction.

The traditional upholstery techniques I apply on most of my work, embody swollen human flesh and erectile tissue. The buttons penetrating the pink flesh of the work represent the moment of coupling and the traversing of barriers between people.

Baby pink with its carnal connotations and gender characteristics, is a prominent color in my work, and also the color I used on the 1st sculpture I produced, Tumescence, 2015.
As this is a self-portrait, the work is as tall as I am 1,84m (6,1ft) high.

Often in my work, I use upholstery as a reflection of skin and flesh. Inspired by semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation) and
by French post-structuralists theorists who led the way after 1968, for example Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction that challenges the idea of frozen sculpture and the notion of a direct relationship between signifier and signified, and Roland Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’ 1976 essay, where I am inspired by the author s notion to let go of my trauma/work.I then metaphorically die and my piece gains a new meaning and experience for those who have acquired various works.
These writers challenged the classical approach to language and meaning in the post-structuralism and deconstruction movement.

When it comes to the human body, its representations, its limits, its symbology, how it interacts with context, my notion of upholstery as a reflection represent various aspects and values of the body.