‘The marble has only been ‘touched’ where the connection point is between the two materials, leaving the trace of the skin so to say. After wearing them the stone also leaves its trace on my skin through its weight. Nevertheless I find it difficult to catergorize the work as there are many layers to it.
The plates can be seen as objects that captured a moment in time when my body actually merged with them (almost like an archive). Since this moment my body is constantly changing and soon I might not fit them anymore. Therefore I don’t think of the moment of wearing them as a performance but rather an attempt to fit them again. The marble plates will outlive my body and are forced to function as autonomous objects.
Marble as a material plays an important role in the context of my family. I grew up with the material in the sculpting school of my father which is located next to the only marble quarry in Switzerland. As soon as I work with this material I have to deal with the fact that I would be the fourth generation of sculpting in stone within my family. This personal context comes back in my work ‘Weight Of Four Generations’ in which I place a big piece of marble onto my leg. Through this interaction I claim my personal ‘space’ within this context.
The marble plates deal with the same interest of our bodies always filling space relating to mental as well as physical space.’
images by Niek Hendrix and Lisa-Marie Vlietstra
Find more of Milena Naef’s work here
