computerized embroidery on sculpture made from remnant cosmetic facial peel
Artwork

Negligee (Slipping Into the Skin of Another)

2007
computerized machine embroidery on remnant cosmetic facial peel, dress form
64 H × 16 W × 16 D in (163 H × 40.64 W × 40.64 D cm)

Negligee (Slipping Into the Skin of Another) materializes childhood memories of a collection of pastel chiffon negligees given to me by my grandmothers, mother and aunts. Wearing them as a small girl transformed me into a gleeful and theatrical caricature of femininity, class, and flamboyance. The project examines the latent potency of objects and their ability to reinforce culturally constructed notions of gender.

Negligee (Slipping Into the Skin of Another) materializes childhood memories of a collection of pastel chiffon negligees given to me by my grandmothers, mother and aunts. Wearing them as a small girl transformed me into a gleeful and theatrical caricature of femininity, class, and flamboyance. The project examines the latent potency of objects and their ability to reinforce culturally constructed notions of gender.

The Daily Voice

…Laura Splan presents the human-scaled, handmade, and the physical body through poetic mediation, reminding us of the inescapable material body…

anti-utopias: Digital Art Series

…An ‘organic cyborg nature’ of the human is unveiled in Laura Splan’s work…Splan’s mixture of scientific and domestic…guides the viewer through an array of captivating approaches that challenge not only current media ideologies but also conceptual paradigms underlying today’s digital art, the question of disembodiment…

American Craft

...Laura Splan disturbs our notions of beauty and femininity by crafting traditionally feminine objects out of unpredictable materials. By using the body as material for textile-based craft, historically thought of as women’s work, Splan shifts the conversation about her work in a way that hearkens back to Miriam Schapiro’s femmage pieces. But in its nearly painful intimacy with the body, Splan’s work has a fresh and universal application: all viewers have their own bodies to contemplate...

Fiberarts Magazine

...Shocking, sexy and uncomfortable are all words that could be used to describe the anatomical art of Laura Splan...these...pieces imply notions of femininity, domesticity, and familiarity alongside confrontational ideas of indulgence, mortality, and body politics...

Rhizome

...In Laura Splan’s mixed-media practice, the human body functions as both a physiological and cultural site: a conjunction of blood, bones, viruses and viscera masked by successive layers of social display...

Craft Magazine

...art that’s fascinating and sometimes shocking . . . a wide variety of highly imaginative work: psychiatric drugs represented in hooked-rug pillows, embroidery on what appears to be skin stretched on hoops, pillows made of meat...wildly creative in such a precise way...

Wignall Museum
Museum of Contemporary Craft