Sculpture & Sensorial Machines
Nerve Fiber
After a peripheral nerve is severed, it doesn’t necessarily become quiet. Nerve fibers can continue to sprout, trying to regenerate and reconnect with what they once supplied. With no clear path, they can become caught in scar tissue and form painful neuromas.
The nerve is, in a sense, still looking.
Nerve Fiber enlarges that biological reaching beyond the scale of the body. Branching forms extend, double back, wrap around the wearer and spill onto the floor. A bellows pushes air through hidden tubes, inflating and collapsing small balloons enclosed in shaped silk. The sculpture pulses, wheezes and gurgles—pain made visible as an event rather than an object.
And while the nerves reach outward, the brain is doing its own strange work: trying to wrap itself around suddenly missing pieces, still carrying a map of a body that has changed.
The nerve looking for the body. The brain looking for the missing body. A signal sent out, still searching for where to arrive.