La Révérence merges performance art photography and photopolymer intaglio printmaking to explore the physical and psychological labor inherent in the disciplines of dance and printmaking. Through layered imagery and textured mark-making, I explore how movement, memory, and emotional residue leave behind intangible impressions that I draw out and preserve in my work. These works are grounded in my dual experiences as a competitive dancer and printmaker, reflecting a personal exploration of the pursuit of perfection and the vulnerability that lies beneath it. Influenced by artists like Yves Klein and Brendan Fernandes, I’m drawn to expressive, conceptual approaches that prioritize emotional presence over physical representation, and frame the body as both subject and tool.

 

I choose to explore themes of resilience, fragility, and movement as they mirror my own lived experience navigating the high expectations of dance and the precision of printmaking. Years of competitive dance instilled in me an awareness of the physical toll that perfection demands, and the silent pressures to maintain composure despite exhaustion, pain, or doubt. Similarly, printmaking’s technical demands often echo the same pursuit of flawlessness, revealing how both practices can merge discipline with the dissolution of individuality. This work allows me to externalize those internal tensions, unveiling what is usually hidden behind the polished surface. By capturing the marks left by the body, I give form to the invisible qualities of exhaustion, perseverance, repetition, and the often isolating labour behind artistry.

 

I begin each piece by capturing performance through long-exposure photography, using the moving body as a tool to record time, gesture, and feeling into an image. These photographs are digitally transferred onto aluminum plates coated with light-sensitive polymer, a process requiring precision and care. The final prints, produced on Somerset Velvet paper, emerge as layered, abstract, and often ghostly physical records of impermanent acts. Techniques such as body printing, compositional erosion and improvisation explore the interplay between presence and absence, turning each work into a tactile reflection of the lasting impact of ephemeral motion. These processes allow me to translate personal memory and performance into a visual language that speaks to broader experiences of pressure, vulnerability, and sacrifice inherent within creative labor.