This series consists of three wooden mannequins wearing inflatable PVC vinyl garments that make visible the body’s instinctive survival responses: fight, flight, and freeze.

Basement Punchbowl represents Fight: an inflated boa supplements and exaggerates the fists, while the body braces upright, making itself as large and imposing as possible.

 

The hand sewn vinyl garment inflates and deflates through an air pump triggered by proximity sensors, creating a wheezing soundscape. Campy and excessive, it highlights how our unconscious biological responses can appear obvious (and absurd and futile) from the outside, while their internal urgency remains uncontrollable in the face of perceived threat. Made from Douglas Fir fence posts, these digitally fabricated and hand carved figures resemble “crash dummies” and embody survival’s plasticity: inflammation, crash, collapse, repeat. A reflection of the invisible machinery that both keeps us alive and harms us.