Chicago artist Angela Lee blends the world of body modification with drawings and stoneware in a new body of work at the Hyde Park Art Center. From cultural taboos to symbols of power, tattoos, piercings and other forms of body modification have played significantly different roles within different societies for thousands of years. Marking the Body explores how the forms, textures and patterns of body modifications have the ability to invoke reverence or revulsion.
Marking the Body explores how the forms, textures and patterns of body modifications have the ability to invoke reverence or revulsion. Lee uses drawing and fired stoneware to capture the colors and shapes of body modification–elements that fade, distort and decay with age–in a static state. These traditional mediums allow for contemplation that is detached from the sometimes unnerving canvas of human skin.