FLIRTING WITH THE JUDGES

I collaborate with female athletes, specifically bodybuilders, whose muscular bodies represent resistance against dominant cultural notions around women as fragile, weak, and subservient. This exploration is inspired by my background as a black belt martial artist, and the things I learned being a female athlete. Being loud was encouraged. It became ok to take up space, I stopped making myself small. I create second-skins to highlight the bodies that exist outside of society’s narrow parameters of femininity. For me, second skin is not only a bespoke garment, that bends, moves, and breathes with its subject, but also its extruding the essence of the subject and creating a piece to reflect that. The athletes breathe life into the pieces that I create for them.