Fina Grimes

Artist Statement

Conceptually speaking, my work is influenced by my life experience. This includes but is not limited to my existence as a disabled queer person and the complex emotions and experiences that come along with those things. For this particular series of work I was interested in the ways in which I am perceived by the world and the intersection of those perceptions with how I view myself. These two ideas marry together within the work to create a distorted and manipulated image.

Materially speaking, I am interested in the ways I can capture imagery to then push, distress and transform through fibers. The process of making my work is often labor intensive, focusing on surface texture as a way to express warping of perception to those viewing my work. I seek to explore and expand surface texture in my soft sculpture pieces.

For this work, I take digital scans and transfer the images onto fabric in which I then sew, fill and manipulate. The process of capturing something in real life through a digital medium, then fabricating a physical object out of its captured image is a manipulation of the way these objects are perceived and presented. These objects and their process of presentation reflect the ways in which I am perceived in the world both from my hand in their creation and the viewers perception of them.

IMAGE GALLERY

Click through to enlarge and view individual artworks from Fina's thesis project.