CORPOREAL CONFINES “Empty Me, A Shell of What Once Was”

DECEMBER 2024

This body of work, entitled “Corporeal Confines,” was inspired by both the hard confining structures used to entrap human life (namely the prison industrial complex) in relation to the often soft cages that imprison animal life, such as nets and traps. When looking into the Prison system, I focused on the bodies forced into this system (Black America). Looking into imprisonment as one form of degradation of the black body used throughout time, I compared it to the sexualization of black femininity, which has also been used to demean black women both then and now. Within this body of work, I sought to represent this attempted belittlement of Black beauty and Black life, while simultaneously creating garments and narratives that were liberatory.

These concepts were explored in my second piece, “Empty Me, A Shell of What Once Was”, which grapples with the notions of subjugated, voluptuous beauty often associated with Black women. This machine-knit piece both emphasizes and conceals the body of its wearer. By altering the immediately visible silhouette to resemble the Jezebel figure and obscuring or masking the face, the garment draws attention to the historical dehumanization these characterizations create. It serves as an imagined version of a Black woman’s form, hollowed out—a conceptual representation of the mental and emotional toll that such subjugation inflicts on Black women, both past and present.

However, this three-piece set grants the wearer full autonomy over how they choose to wear it. They can dictate the level of restriction or freedom they desire by altering the piece to their preference. This flexibility allows the garment to become multi-dimensional, acting as a visual reminder of the ongoing struggle to end the subjugation, fetishization, and degradation of Black femininity and the Black female body. At the same time, it liberates the wearer by returning control to those who inhabit its fiber walls.

PROCESS

GARMENT DETAILS

Azaria Van Der Stok-Smallwood