(2018)
Ballgag, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Splinter, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Overbite, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
20″ x 25″ (limited edition of 10)
Snout, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Leech, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Snick, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Scritch, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
36″ x 48″ (limited edition of 5) / 18″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Buffet, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Quarter, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
SpiderLash, Digital Inkjet Print, 2018
34″ x 51″ (limited edition of 5) / 16″ x 24″ (limited edition of 10)
Installation View, Fashion Art Toronto, Daniels Spectrum – Toronto-ON, 2018
Installation View, Aurora Cultural Centre – Aurora-ON, 2022
Installation View, Aurora Cultural Centre – Aurora-ON, 2022
Installation View, Aurora Cultural Centre – Aurora-ON, 2022
In my work I aim to cultivate an aesthetic that is simultaneously seductive and unsettling as a means of investigating the overlap between desire, fantasy, and self-image. Cut, extracted, layered and lit, these photographed assemblages present the female body as a sight of anxiety — one that concurrently functions as both self-made armor and a fractured hindrance. The figure has built a world for herself that is enchanting, yet pernicious to her survival, in which she disassociates from both herself and her environs. Decoration begins to take on an insidious purpose, often masking her figure, pushing the nature of her subject hood into a state of flux.
I am highly interested in the fashion model’s function as a commodity mannequin, made seductive in order to sell. She commands and generates desire, not only for a product or lifestyle, but also for an identity or persona. Likewise, female power often becomes synonymous with buying power, with the female body becoming a site for celebrating consumerism in a false sense of female empowerment. I abuse this narrative in my work, employing the female body as an undead armature for display, exploiting its potential for accessorization to make it strange.
Risking erasure while also beautiful to the point of bursting, these decorative surfaces thus begin to paint images of identities in states of excess. Ensnared within the paper trappings of luxury and lifestyle, her value becomes equivalent to that of a hat rack, detaining her in the liminal space between dissolution and becoming.
NICOLE CROZIER 