Soft Animal is an ongoing body of work that contends with notions of beauty and desire. Over time, my relationship to beauty has evolved into a fixation on the sculptural logic of aesthetic medicine. These clay studies were a cathartic response, meant as a meditation on the effects of light, shadow and form on perception and visual pleasure. Building on research into abstraction, harmony, and the histories of beauty, the intention for neutral analysis quickly dissolved into what felt like unending iteration and a longing for perfection that never quite seemed to arrive. The work drifts into questions of objectivity, agency, and the flattening gaze of the digital age.

This chapter of the project began as a sort of diaristic sketchbook for processing my experience during a time marked by disorienting heartache and its effect on my self-concept. By blending documentation of everyday rituals with performance and transformation through self-portraiture, these pictures trace my internal negotiations between vulnerability and disguise, desiring to see myself both as I am and as an idealized other.