Metal Memory

Sophia Gatzkan’s work addresses the exploration of the human body in relation to non-normative morphologies and the complexities of contemporary identity. Using a language that combines organicity and artifice, the artist interrogates common notions of normality, ability and bodily integrity, proposing a critical reinterpretation of the body and its representation as dimensions of transformation, ambiguity and possibility. Her work is nourished by a dialogue with post-humanist studies, opening up reflections on how the representation of the body is fabricated, mediated and politicised in order to activate a space where fragility and power intertwine in new forms of existence. Her sculptural practice is a hybrid territory in which more or less recognisable portions of the human body merge with objects peeled away from their original function, yet evocative and charged with narrative potential. From these casts of anatomical fragments, Gatzkan seeks figurative ways of staging an encounter between the human and the non-human. Hybrid forms emerge, crossed by the concept of prosthesis, understood as technology capable of amplifying the capabilities of these blended bodies; evanescent, almost spectral figures crystallised in a tension between permanence and precariousness. Elements such as orthopaedic fixators invite caution, while materials such as horn herald slow regeneration; symbols midway on the spectrum between self-defence and violence, leaving the viewer in a state of uncertainty or even apprehension. Despite this apparent immobility, the sculptures are anything but static, becoming theoretical devices that invite us to reconsider bodily experience not as a defined unit, but as a continuum of possibilities and mutations. As in Ciobanu’s work, Gatzkan creates subterranean narratives that speculate on the instability of identity and how it adapts, protects, expands or reinvents itself. To heal, one must first hurt.