Legs is Legs (2020)

The Graft series explores how subjects modify and manipulate their bodies to straddle (ab)normality. The series communicates how a Black subject, determined from without and defined by all she is not, actively participates in her own transformation – a metamorphosis represented by the adoption or removal of a new layer of skin.

In Legs is Legs, I engaged in the reiterative practice of binding my body with stockings and nylon pantyhose to an ironing board. Through the act of restraining myself with accessories that are commonly used to keep the body “in line”, I attempted to physicalize the constraints that dictate how women can and should present their bodies to others. Bound by over 100 pairs of stockings, my immobility and self-imposed entrapment represents the violence that’s enacted to uphold conceptions of gender.