Rachel Smith

Carbon Bodies

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Carbon Bodies is an ongoing investigation of a bodily response to and in language. An expanding grammar of graphite marks. Historically, writing has been an act of carving, pressing a mark into a surface. As words are imprinted on a page, language presses against my surface creating a friction with the body.

 

The mouth opens and closes but nothing is uttered […] words fail.

A somatic event of the as–yet–unexpressed.

 

Watch for the bodily glitch as internal and external processes [mis]align.

​

thinking–as–drawing–as–writing–as–stimming

 

Full stops close and open; they create a threshold, a boundary, a breath. A full stop insists on exclusion, creating excess. As the work retreats from textuality, the stops are untethered from language, leaving them pointing at potential locations which remain incoherent.

​

A modular set of drawings, with the potential to be endlessly rearranged, almost sculptural as the paper drifts from the wall.

paper, vellum, graphite, and letterpress.

​

​