Bear fruit

This Master’s Report is a discussion of the ideas, research, and methods I have developed over the course of my three years of study at the University of Texas at Austin. My work draws from a multiplicity of traditions from classical figurative sculpture, feminism, mid-century modern design, large-scale outdoor fountains, to Victorian crafts. The fountains use neoclassical figurative sculptures of women as a point of departure. The original sculpture is translated through a feminist lens and recreated using fruit, rearranging and displacing gender specific sexualities by replacing otherwise sexualized bodies with representations of pears or a pineapple, among other fruits. Cultural references to these specific fruits, a pear-shaped body or the exoticism and colonialism inferred with a pineapple, are important contextual references in the transmutation from figurative sculpture to fruit fountain. The high relief wall sculptures, smooth body parts monochromed in soft colors, speak to the fragments of classical sculptures while conflating gender cues. They confuse our ability to stereotype as non-binary representations of body. In all, the work mimics moments of bodily intimacy while playfully dealing with reproduction, eroticism, as well as the problematic aspects of the sculptural tradition embedded within the patriarchal system.