UNSAID: ABSENCE 13

Artist Statement

UnSaid: Absence 13 is a work about the conditions under which the body is allowed to appear. It begins from a simple but persistent question: what is removed for an image to be seen as acceptable, and how does that removal shape what remains?

The work takes the female body as a site structured by these conditions. A stitched figure, built slowly through repeated gestures of thread, forms the central body. Yet it is incomplete. The parts of the body that are commonly censored across social, cultural, and digital contexts are not erased but displaced, suspended outside the figure. Their absence is therefore not neutral; it is visible, structural, and active. The body that remains is one that has been edited in advance, shaped by the limits of what can be shown.

The work is constructed on a transparent surface and installed in space rather than fixed to a wall. This transparency allows the body to remain open, permeable, and contingent. Viewers can stand behind the work, and in doing so, their own bodies enter into its field. During exhibition, this occurred naturally, with visitors photographing themselves behind the piece, momentarily aligning their bodies with the absent form. These moments do not resolve the missing parts but briefly occupy the space of absence, producing a shifting and unstable image of presence.

The work therefore exists across multiple registers: as a constructed body, as a censored body, and as a site of live encounter. The stitched line records time and labor, embedding the act of making into the surface. At the same time, the displaced elements interrupt this continuity, preventing the body from becoming whole. The viewer’s presence introduces a further layer, where the body is temporarily reconstituted, only to dissolve again as movement continues.

UnSaid: Absence 13 extends an ongoing investigation into the persistence of the trace. Here, the trace is not only a mark of presence but a record of its regulation. What is missing becomes as significant as what is shown, and visibility is revealed as something negotiated rather than given.

The work does not attempt to restore the body to completeness. Instead, it holds it in a state of tension between presence and absence, visibility and restriction. It asks how the body is constructed through what it cannot show, and how those exclusions continue to shape the ways in which we see, inhabit, and represent ourselves.

UnSaid: ABSENCE 13 appeared in the group exhibition UnSaid at Dienstegebäude Art Space, Zurich, Switzerland.

UnSaid is a cross cultural curatorial collaboration concerned with censorship and many of the forms that can take

In collaboration with OnCurating Project Space, curators; Maria Sorensen, Lara Sutter, Lynn Guo, Frances Melhop + Melhop Gallery, Evgenia Kostinskaia, and Zahira Mozafari present their latest exhibition UnSaid.

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