Morgan Paul

I look at my body as object and outfit, as self and mask. I continuously display and inhibit my own image, using pattern and clothing in order to give voice to who I am, and how I see myself. Painstakingly slicing, layering, arranging, and suturing together images of myself, ​my body​, and my wardrobe with all the obsessive zeal of a contemporary Victor Frankenstein. It is a strange form of therapy through self-cannibalism, one that I have been participating in for years. A marriage of body and pattern that conceals and exposes who I am simultaneously.

My current work utilizes photographic, sculptural, and textile elements — often in unison, resulting in visually stimulating and perplexing compositions. Manual photo manipulations are made into sculptural objects. Two dimensional images are pushed into three dimensional space through pattern and embroidery. Fabric shrouds skin, only to later become the flesh it once obscured.

Items as bodies, bodies as items.

Body as form, forms on bodies.

All of these aspects seek to challenge what we see at face value, and what is actually underneath.

Who I am is for me specifically to know, and because of this the patterns that I use are my camouflage and my anchor. They hide and distort me in equal measure, bending who I am and making me near incomprehensible unless you take the time to look. They are my strength and my greatest dependency. My second skin, both literally and figuratively.

I will play, just as I do in my art and life, and let you try and guess who I am if you take the time to look. I am giving you my body, giving you my vulnerability. But, I am not giving you all of me –– it is not my job nor my obligation to define myself for you.

So....come find me if you can.

I dare you.