What the Body Holds

My desire to develop a body of work around what reality conceals and evades our view led me to looking at a collection of vintage X-rays I had on hand. X-rays pass through human tissue, rendering the bones and tissue beneath visible. Our bodies are informed by a lifetime of experiences throughout our lives. The translucency of the vintage X-rays when enhancing them with wax highlights the light and depth in the work.

I have discovered that found or repurposed imagery, objects and materials carry powerful associations and multiple meanings. I feel deeply that the metaphors that come from within our physical bodies are repositories for our emotions. Of course, in some of the work I create some of the story will be apparent. In others the story will not be evident. The viewer will have the chance to have their imagination take over in vividly emotional ways.

—Nanette Rae Freeman, 2021, Chicago

"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

—Paul Bowels, The Sheltering Sky

Materials: foam, paper, cardboard, vintage photos, X-Rays, tar, and encaustic medium.