Fitting the Subject/Object by Leslie Batty

This project begins an exploration of the ways in which cultural systems seek to construct our ideas of identity and sexuality, addressing the ironies of how we create/invent ourselves within the context of our society, history, and culture. These representations come from my own questions regarding the feminine subject as a signifier, an object of desire and commodity, as well as a source of creativity and self-invention.

Informed and inspired by memories of sewing with the women in my family, these paintings portray various stages of creating, fitting and wearing sewing pattern dresses. The materials and stages of this process act as a metaphor, addressing the tension between seemingly irreconcilable structures of the Self: The feminine Subject and the feminine Object. Here, she is seen as both the Artist in the act of creating herself, and as the faceless body of Woman.