Inner Textures II
Artist Statement
Maybe I do want you to hurt a little. To feel some of what I felt.
And so in Part II, I wanted you to touch these textures, rugged, spiky, invitingly smooth. I wanted you to physically experience this piece, and by tracing it, to hear what that feels like. You can make music out of pain, I hear.
I chose copper because it is soft and malleable, while also strong and durable. It is also very conductive. And honestly, it's pretty. The earthy tones and the colours that explode through oxidation feel most fitting to represent the inside of a person.
Copper never looks the same twice. Every touch leaves a trace - scratches, dents, oxidation. The surface becomes a memory carrier, archiving each encounter across time. As Octavia Butler wrote, ‘whatever you touch you change, whatever you change, changes you’. To touch is to alter, to be altered.
Here are my insides. Play with them. See what happens.
This never got made, and I am not sure when it will, but the idea still feels necessary.
The images accompanying this piece are AI-generated, created as visual explorations of what these works might look like.
AI-generated image
AI-generated image
Alexandra Margarint is a photographer and visual artist. She graduated from the Contemporary Media Practice program at the University of Westminster in 2014, working with photography and installation as forms of expression. After six years in software development, she has returned to her artistic practice. She spent 13 years in London, where her work was exhibited at Ambika P3 and The Holy Art Gallery. She is now based in Iasi, Romania.
@alexandra_marge
Artist Statement
INNER TEXTURES I is a two-part series of photographs taken during the pandemic. I was fortunate enough to live near Peckham Rye park in London, and walking there, taking pictures of plants, was a large part of keeping me relatively sane. I'd been dealing with depression and anxiety all my life, and a long period of isolation did not do any favors to my mind or my heart.
When I returned to these images later, I started noticing a pattern. In most of them, texture kept resurfacing - some scratchy, some soft and decaying, some almost stabbing. These textures mirrored how I was moving through the isolation and uncertainty. Sometimes it was restricting and painful. Sometimes soft, but only as a small respite from the pain - not met with hope, as I would have liked, but with a kind of resignation.
Through this work, I invite you to touch through seeing.
I don't want you to hurt.
I need a witness.