“Body/Mind:Matter” by Mary Ratcliff

LSU College of Art & Design MFA Thesis Exhibition Series

I was recently asked to photograph the installations of two LSU MFA students, Mary Ratcliff & Stephanie Cobb. Here are the images from “Body/Mind:Matter”, by Mary Ratcliff.

Artist Statement:

“to find solutions, we will need to reimagine our place in nature, our responsibilities as members of communities, and the meaning of a good life–which is to say, “we will require a shift in consciousness as radical as any mutation in our evolutionary history.”

- Scott Russell Sanders

Body/Mind:Matter presents the unfiltered experiences of living in a period of momentous instability. Three life-sized figurative sculptures stage my emotional journey towards mindfulness as a direct response to the pandemic and my growing concern for our future. A winding network of crocheted yarns and growing vines interweave the troubled figures to signify our complex dependenceis upon one another and the world around us.

The condition of the disabled bodies is a result of the worried mind. In each figure, a source of matter is imagined as means of reconciliation. Decaying surfaces reveal new life; intricately fused wires uphold under immense pressure; soft woven fibers form a protective web. The paradoxical relationships that are formed indicate a pursuit of healing and seeking balance.