Laura Degn

I am interested in the horrific, abject and grotesque. It's what we don't necessarily want to see, but still can't bring ourselves to look away from. Through my works I explore the boundaries between the beautiful and the grotesque. I do this by examining the inside and outside of the body. That which is expelled from the body and becomes abject, as well as the exterior of the body, which we can recognize in ourselves, but deconstructed.

Through several of my works, I transform  the figurative body, to a more flowing and indefinable body, which in my eyes means that the works will seem both attractive and recognizable, but also repulsive and unrecognizable at the same time, and thereby they become abject body objects. In this way, I highlight new bodies and body shapes that take as their starting point the human body as we know it, but transformed, like a snake that changes him.

At the same time, I am also interested in investigating the things that we lose from the body over time, such as hair, skin and nails. This only becomes repulsive when it leaves the body's natural element and becomes dead parts of ourselves that we may find difficult to relate to.

My works can appear in traditional sculpture materials, such as plaster or concrete, but also materials that imitate skin, textiles, latex/silicone or natural parts from the body such as hair. I often take my own body as a starting point when I access the materials. Where I make impressions of my own body in the silicone, or make casts of myself in different ways. So there will often be parts of myself found in my works, which become organic elements. It is therefore also an abjection from and by my own body.