There is a duality that exists in nature within life and death that I am fascinated by. Everything that is living is also simultaneously dying. In my eyes, this can often be translated to ‘decay’. Through my work I communicate meditations, questions, and ideas involving the decay of physical things, human and feminine mortality, spiritual energy, relationships between nature, humans, and technology, ecology, cycles and dualities, the interconnectivity of the human body, and posthumanist philosophies.There was a period of time when I was a teenager that I became ill. I experienced the physical decay of my own body and mental decay of my own mind at a time where I was supposed to be in peak physical and feminine condition. This experience was undoubtedly a significant event responsible for the outburst of my fascination with decay, which led to my research in corresponding topics. I express my research and ideas through multiple mediums including charcoal, oil paint, mixed media sculpture, and sculptural photography. I often use light as a metaphor for transcendence by incorporating the use of translucent or reflective materials like resin and metal in sculpture and am suggestive of space where light might pass through or bounce off of in drawings and paintings using high contrast compositions and clean, smooth gradients.  Using oil paint on canvas I make balanced compositions with heavy emphasis on symmetry as I create an imagined scene of the emergence of the soul into the realm of the living and the departing of the soul into the realm of the dead. I imagine what that might look like happening simultaneously, questioning if there exists a realm where souls come from to be born and if there exists a realm where souls go after death. I am curious if these realms sit on the same plane, and if they exist in the same place. I abstract, disassemble, and suspend parts of the human body, especially parts of the inside of the body, and imagine what the soul and human consciousness might look like in a form that the human eye or mind could perceive. I wonder how connected the soul and its consciousness is to the human body and its physical form and express time not as a linear event, but as an explosion of events, happening all at once.I think in a way I'm both really afraid of time passing and of death, and exorbitantly fascinated with it. It consumes a lot of my thoughts and of my mind space. The universal dread of our own mortality only grows stronger. With this I hope to facilitate or invite the viewer into conversations, questions, ideas and introspections about mortality, life and death, and physical decay alongside me, the artist.

Chicago, IL

contact or inquiries:

skobbe@artic.edu