Asa Nisi Masa is a series of sculptures conceived to inhabit spaces and wear architecture. While architecture has always been intrinsic to my painting practice, this body of work shifted my gaze from architecture itself to its inhabitants. I began making sculptures that could inhabit my studio and wear my architecture.
I moved away from the pigmented concrete that had long defined my practice, turning instead to the malleability of wax and the fragility of paper in an attempt to drape the sculptures in skin − or rather, with the memory of skin in the absence of bodies.
Working with organic, perishable materials such as wax, wood, paper, and hemp freed the sculptures from their timelessness, situating them not only in space but also in time. Their vulnerability binds them to the passage of time.
Asa Nisi Masa is also a nursery rhyme, a mantra, a prayer − an invocation for the statues’ eyes to come alive. In Fellini’s 8½, children whisper these words in the hope that, overnight, a painting will awaken and, through its gaze, reveal where a hidden treasure is buried.
