Katya Anderson

Assemblage is a modular sculpture inspired by the work of Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing. This work represents the interconnected and interdependent relationships that we have with our surroundings.

Consisting of suspended textile pieces that form a continuous network, these cloth pieces act as a canvas or a “skin,” on which lights and projectors impose site-specific images, creating depth, shapes, and shadows. The modular frame, created from dowels and metal hardware, forms the “bones” of the structure. The use of found textiles and materials, as well as site-specific photo, video, and sound from where the work is exhibiting, situates the sculpture as a product of, and a contributor to, it’s local environment.

This project explores boundaries and coexistence between body and environment, demonstrating that the relationship we form with our surroundings is dynamic, continuous, and porous. Assemblage represents a relationship between self and environment that is reciprocal and constitutive: constantly impressing on and informing the other, it is impossible to separate a body from its surroundings. As we act on our environment, our environment acts on us.

The result of this intimate and simultaneous co-existence with our environment is a network of knotted connections - Assemblage presents a sensuous grid of interwoven and interlaced segments, of mutable openings, and evolving shapes. The sculpture spills out of the constraints of its own frame, and the seams of various and diverse elements coming together are made visible as evidence of connection.

Made up of multiple-viewpoints, Assemblage resembles a collage or patchwork. By exploring the web of relations that entangle us, Assemblage visualises the interdependency of a variety of actors within a system, and the influence and impact that each part contributes to a whole.

Being a modular sculpture, the work evolves over time with every new iteration. New arrangements of Assemblage develop the history and identity of the work as it accrues new contexts. As a result, this work meditates on how the body, relationships, and identity absorb, shift, and adapt to new environments.