“My skin is the co-author of my work,” says Laura Hospes (1994). The artist has been using her body as the starting point for her work for years. Previously, this mainly involved photography. Her presentation at Prospects marks a new development in her practice towards more spatial work. An example of this is the shape of a lower body with colourful silicones dripping from it in an almost grim way.
Working with your own body creates a certain sense of autonomy. To Hospes this reaches beyond its shape alone: “The skin has a quality unlike anything else. It can heal itself and has remarkable elasticity.” The artist previously believed the work process had to be accompanied by a certain amount of physical suffering: “A mental or physical challenge, like taping my entire body— nearly a kind of compulsion to destroy myself.” Today, the artist tries to achieve the same intensity in her work without necessarily engaging in a performative effort.
Like Hospes’s working method, her sculptures are also becoming less constrained. “The work is becoming increasingly abstract, I no longer directly need my own skin to realize my vision.” This also means that she no longer needs to make literal copies or moulds to convey her own physicality. And yet, the skin remains a determining factor, as exemplified by the title of her work at Prospects: Echoes of Flesh (2023). She is now increasingly pushing the boundaries of how far a body can be transformed until it is no longer a body.
Text: Milo Vermeire
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang