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Ceramic body parts hung in front of a wall covered in text. On the left are disembodied faces. In front and to the right are disconeccted body parts hung to form a body. The photo cuts off at the waiste with the remainder of the piece out of frame.

Fragmented Body

Jaymes Walker

Underglaze, mason stain, and underglaze pencil on bisque stoneware along with slip-cast porcelain head, paired with ink on painted wall., 2022

Undergraduate
The trans body has become a talking point Appearance becomes personal, political, media, art A hollow representation of who we are And yet it is inescapable Both body and the visible My body, created by screen printing, lithographic printing, ink transfer, painting, drawing, spraying, and molding clay around my body with both an exterior and interior.. The caved in white head—slip cast porcelain—acts as a blank canvas to match the second half of my piece: the faces. My face printed over and over in a similarly wide variety of ways: four color screen printing, mono printing, impressions, lithographic printing, ink transfer, carving, and painting—a testament to my process. Behind these, a wall of my journal entries written while working, screen printed onto the bare wall. Each method I explored came to represent the mental place I was in while working: Should I abstract the body? Should I break the body apart? Could my work reach some sort of synthesis? When I felt I had reached a conclusion, something new would emerge—a new way of combining materials, a new way to look at the body, a new perspective on visibility—and I would be thrust back into inquiry. In time, process became the work itself, as did the questions that arose while making it: I embraced my raw edges and incongruities, and am allowing myself to be seen by others.