Empire
2019
Material/Technique: Cut and drilled plastic tubing, stainless wire,
Hormones: Estrogen, Progesterone, LH (Luteinizing Hormone), FSH (Follicle-Stimulating Hormone)
The installation Empire serves as an antithesis to the masculine forms and proportions that dominate western classical architecture and sites of secular and religious power. By cutting and arranging tubes that graph the hormone levels of female born person over a months period, I visualize the female hormonal cycle as a free-standing architectural structure. The curved surfaces of the serpentine units distort the surrounding when walking through it as well as the viewer’s own body within it.
In classical architecture and religious buildings female number are avoided ( odd number are male, even numbers female) as they are considered weak. Thinking about how Empires have been created by men and how how architecture is created by men, I wanted to create a space of female power in form of a portable architectural intervention based on the only empire female bodies exclusively contain, our internal makeup. I used the graph of the female hormonal cycle over a month’s period to model an architecture of curves, that stand in contrast to the hard angled spaces we inhabit. Each section is flexible and can be rolled into a bundle to be transported and set up anywhere.