Isabel Vermeulen
Sculpture
My practice explores fears, anxieties, and traumas concerning physical, emotional, and sexual abuse resulting in trauma. To express these physical and mental afflictions, I utilize ink drawings, mixed media sculpture, and photographs as methods to portray my own emotional turmoil with domestic and sexual assault. Through these various mediums, I negotiate these subjects from a personal context as a method of understanding my own and other people’s experiences with traumatic experiences. Drawing, in its direct and immediate quality, is used as a medium to translate the visceral nature of thoughts due to trauma. Sculpture, inversely, acts as a theatrical medium in which scenes and bodies are given embodied form to materialize both fictional and non-fictional characters. And photography, as a medium, is able to document the theatricality of sculpture and the body within the space.
I utilize the erotic and grotesque to express loss of innocence experienced by young survivors of violence, as I am grieving my own loss of self. By focusing on trauma, I hope to aid others negotiate their own emotional wounds.
Loving Protege
Pink fabric, handmade resin buttons, thread.
Vulnerable Protégé
Pink skirt, polymer clay buttons, thread.
"I Told You Already"
Tokophobia (Placenta)
