Olivia Bode

Artist Statement

Growing up in Senegal, where craft was livelihood, I was always taught that my hands are the most powerful tools I could have. And so, they drove my work. Acting as an extension of my thoughts, abstractions in my head were translated into the physical world through sewing and sculpting, cooking and building, welding and writing--and they all became a catalog of my experiences. The varying dialogues between the body and space that came with practicing and experimenting with these skills is what I have become infatuated with; the ways in which we move through, inhabit, and relate to space differently, and how that can be transcribed into art.

Applying this lens to my everyday life brought about my focus: the unignorable dualities of my experience as a woman, specifically my navigation through the sexual assaults I’ve experienced—the restriction and freedom, exposure and obscuration, fragility and violence, assumptions and reality–all in relation to physical and psychological space. Vicerality becomes both juxtaposed and paralleled to beauty through my use of feminine language, motifs, materials, and processes: textiles blur into organs, hand-stitched glass beading to veins, delicate laces into fats. Through my work, I capture my unique–yet shared–experience of moving through the world as a woman. The result is authentic and unforgiving work.