DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/3ZQZ-P844
Defense Date
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Craft/Material Studies
First Advisor
Hillary Waters Fayle
Second Advisor
Jack Wax
Third Advisor
Annie Evelyn
Abstract
I have been reflecting on my past decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia. Reinterpreting this experience through the lenses of mythology and magic, I have constructed these Stygian carcasses (from the river Styx, which serves to separate the living and the dead) using my own bodily proportions in muslin, an intermediary material which requires transformation. In this work, I utilize these forms to symbolically rot for me as my body did, performing a type of sympathetic magic (magic worked from afar on another person) on myself, extending my life and allowing all which occurs between birth and death to affect these forms and not myself.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
4-25-2025