She Becomes The Mountain

This project emanated from the single term integrate; the concept of immersing myself in the unknown, the untamed, and the damned transcended into something akin to a baptism. Pulling inspiration from Annie Brigman, Rebecca Horn, and Agnes Denes, the theme of the wilderness began to mold into an alternate form. Originally viewed as a landscape for heathens, the wild now becomes a place where human and nature coincide and oppose. The concept of integration was primary for this project, connecting the female form to the landscape of the uncontrollable. My aim is to investigate ecofeminist themes and how the female body hides, restores, and flourishes in the land of sin.

The garden exists in a yonic state, inherently connected to the intersection between female free will, original sin, and the infamous Garden of Eden. My goal is to investigate the ambivalent division of Christian-Western “femininity” in the Madonna and the nymph. This project was ignited through the historical linage of the wilderness as a demonic place for the untamed (where Jesus wrestled with the Devil). The downfall of the garden was courteously of Eve, thus came the punishment of Adam laboring in the fields and Eve suffering from the pain of childbirth. The evolution of the wild shifted particularly during the western frontier with the rise of masculinity taming what was once untamable. This is the crux of what interests me; femininity is commonly interwoven with nature, as Mother Earth, but is rarely attributed with the unruly and destructive tendencies. Converging this concept of Mother Earth with the garden fabricates a contradiction and depicts gender coding in symbolism.