Sanna Namin

Figuring is my latest body of work that sees the introduction of the material foam embodied in transient and wearable sculptures. 

The soft sculptural quality of foam allows me to use the different shape pieces to playfully sketch new silhouettes freely presenting a series of temporal figures, shape-shifting to present limitless evolutions of self, despite what might be restraining us. In many ways this process has been an exercise of breaking free from industry conditioning as well as the identity politics we navigate ourselves through. I have been relearning how I used to play and sketch before I became aware of societal constructs that are performed and gate kept by many. As a child I’d visit my Grandparents in North Sweden, playing with my cousin to build boats out of scraps from my Grandfather’s metal workshops and building sails out of my Grandmother’s knitted scraps. We’d sail the boat down the river and it would always sink much like these transient sculptures would never hold - the beauty was always in the play. 

On a more tangible lens of these sentiments I’ve been constructing wearable sculptures tying in my three core materials; using stretch fabric and boning to structure the foam to be able to hold silhouettes for long durations of time. These pieces do not suggest how they should be worn in relation to the body and are up to the wearers to sculpt themselves freely as they wish to present themselves.