Violet Maimbourg

Lives and works in Cleveland, OH, USA

Artist statement

The human body has been celebrated, rejected, and censored throughout history. We are all meat vessels powered by electricity we gain from metabolizing food with the extraordinary ability to heal ourselves and fight disease from within. We are capable of independent thought and the ability to be self-aware which brings about feelings of shame and disgust, setting us apart from other animals. This awareness inevitably leads to shame. My work encapsulates these feelings of shame and horror in sculptures made of soft silicone which can appear to be human body parts or mutant human hybrids. My work is inherently visceral and involves deep emotion. My most recent piece, “Inescapable Self”, is a meat blob mass including my own face and body parts, showing the world how I feel being a human in this world. As much as I like to think I’m the only person who feels this way, I believe it is part of the universal human experience. My naked, bloody, and bruised flesh creatures are more self-portraits than figments of my imagination, showing how I have been trained through the consumption of media and rhetoric to view my own humanity and body. I see my own body as one view these creatures, with body parts that don’t belong and anatomy that doesn’t adhere to the ideal. Using silicone allows for the replication of human flesh with color and transparency. I feel that this transformation can happen with all of us as we begin to accept our bodies as they are. My work comes from an...

Artwork