CORPUS

PHIA SPENCER

Wheaton College, March 2023

Walford Main Gallery

My work is an intimate investigation of belonging in space and time. Through mixed media prints and artist books, I question what it is to feel at home: regarding architectural structures, commonplace objects, such as chairs, and the human form as vessels of memory. As an adult in my childhood town, I find the illusion of being “in place” has dissipated. The streets and trees no longer belong to me; perhaps they do not even belong to my memories. My work reflects on this experience and wrestles with the possibility that this was a self-imposed illusion and I was never at home to begin with. 

In this way, my body of work reflects on Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. I consider the house and body as both exhibitions and embodiments of myself, in turn, examining them as records of memory. Like Bachelard's poetics, my images are often about negative space, the spaces between things and around them, rather than the thing itself.

 I cut away. I leave areas blank. It is in this absence that content is created.