Matilda Moors United Kingdom
I am an artist and academic working with sculpture, writing, print and installation. I deploy languages associated with youth culture to create pieces with a skewed-cartoonesque-cuteness. My practice and research focus on the tension between cuteness and violence as a way to probe the contradictions in contemporary consumer culture.
Cuteness is often used to obscure violence. My work addresses this dynamic by drawing connections between the physical stresses and abnormalities of cartoon or monstrous bodies and ideas of abjection and difficulty associated with historical feminist and queer artwork. I make instalation, sculpture, print and audio work that blends the raw aesthetic of fandom with the polished veneer of animation. Thematically, my work deals with consumption, conformity, bodies, girlish-ness and anxiety. Politically, it makes the case for frivolousness as an act of resistance.
Underpinning my work is an investigation of the boundary between flatness and depth. I’m fascinated by the permeability of surfaces (skin, walls, pages and screens) and how we press up against them so I often work site-specifically using a space’s architecture to realise my pieces. I use various processes including silk screen, digital printing, drawing and sewing that share the material quality of flatness in order to express a kind of tragic desire of the minor to become more monumental. Creating a sense of anxiety that our naïve fantasies might run amok whilst grappling with the sense of failure that comes from knowing they won’t.
