Selena Ingram

Fragile Morphologies of Pulp Bodies

Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts

Project Statement

Fragile Morphologies of Pulp Bodies is an installation of handmade paper that functions as a mirror to the ongoing interchanges between our bodies, water, and domestic environments. Paper sculptures of water fixtures like bathtubs and sinks, cast from the apartment where I live, are covered in organic detritus, hair, and soil; meanwhile, water trickles through the paper, dissolving the structures over time back into a fibrous pulp. This project visualizes a nexus highlighting the fragility of our relationship to the water infrastructure we are dependent upon and the way our own embodied boundaries ultimately dissolve into trans-corporeality. Part sculpture, part pop-up amateur lab, part investigation of domestic sources of water, this project functions best as it falls apart, reckoning our continuous but permeable state.

We frequently spend time in bathrooms working to make our bodies presentable in one fashion or another, disposing waste, cleaning ourselves, belying the effort we spend exerting control over our bodies. However, this process becomes complicated when the body becomes sick, or in some way un-controllable: spending too much time in the bathroom, or discussing causes of improper waste disposal, are taboo. Those bodily functions - shit, piss, pus, mucus - we work to ignore, or at the very least avoid, because it's gross, regardless of the universality of bodily fluid. Like exposure to toxins crossing biological boundaries, body dysfunction becomes illustrative of the social boundaries that are so carefully constructed around what is considered healthy or hygienic and what is considered abject, that which is repellent or disgusting.

Having spent years negotiating with my own body in bathrooms due to various gastrointestinal illnesses, I realized I had become particularly attuned to shame and anxiety over sickness, while fighting to return to "normal," and that furthermore my shame over bodily function was compounded by societal pressure to perform gender in a particular manner. For this reason, I felt focusing on the bathroom space was critical in making the work and began casting objects from my apartment bathroom, making multiple tubs, sinks, and toilets.

Focusing on bathroom infrastructure, my installation plans feature paper sculptures of sinks, a bathtub, and pipes, all removed from their original context and remade into a different type of liquid-cycling body. The paper forms are suspended above a shallow basin, where water pools before being pulled upwards through tubing and allowed to seep through the paper structures. Over time, the paper sculptures loose shape and fall apart into the basin below, where continuous water flow would slowly render the paper back to fibrous pulp.

Ongoing chemical changes and transformation create a positive feedback system: the longer time goes on, the stronger the smell and sounds become as the sculptures fall apart. The paper sculptures are literally being transformed back into a wet, fibrous state, considering the watery pulp as the sculpture’s final form within the space. As the installation continues to degrade and water recycles through, the water takes on a murky orange appearance from the buildup of the iron oxide-rich red clay soil separated from the pulped fibers through the screen. The sculpture itself is mortal: it falls apart from the weight and chemical changes water brings to the paper fiber, time being the only variable. The installation confronts the viewer, placing them in a position to consider the immediate reactions both stemming from experiences in the bathroom as well as in considering the very features that make us as organisms, lacking the concrete boundaries we typically construct through norms and actions.

Digital Edition of Fragile Morphologies of Pulp Bodies

Artist Statement

My artistic practice continuously grapples to understand both artistic and scientific spheres of study as one: we cannot separate microbial and ecological processes from social, cultural and creative making. I experiment with ways the tangible book and handmade paper can embody personal experiences or capture a particular definition of the “body.” Is one’s body defined by the amount of microplastic ingested? The amount of plastic waste created in a month? The number of bathrooms I was sick in? The text messages exchanged, or screenshots saved? If these items or images are held on pages by the reader, bound with a spine, what do they learn about (my)self? I argue that we must understand the tangible and inseparable relationship between ourselves and our environment and use such knowledge to address environmental and social issues such as climate change, air and water pollution, and public health. For this reason, my handmade paper is made of as much recycled material as possible—most often waste that I’ve collected over time—and includes hair, mica, soil, and plastic. In this way, the paper substrate parallels the unique materials our existence leaves behind at any given moment. The final works stand in for the physical body, presented as a collection of detritus created by the ecology of my own body and the particular environments I navigate. 

Artist Biography

Selena Ingram is an artist and researcher working out of Chicago. Originally from Atlanta, Selena studied printmaking and microbiology at the University of Georgia before pursuing her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Combining interests in papermaking, bookbinding, microbial ecologies, and environmental research, Selena’s work ranges from traditional artist book editions to sculptural paper installations. 

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www.selenaingram.com