Featured image: The exterior of the...
A Body of Work Inspired by One Hip Replacement
February 17, 2023
(updated February 17, 2023)
Published by artistvenu
Detail view of Christine Cassano, “Gravity of Correspondence” (2018), hand-formed porcelain and mirror, 80 inches x 24 inches x 18 inches (all images courtesy the artist)
Interdisciplinary artist Christine Cassano stacked over 500 translucent porcelain forms resembling human vertebrae atop a horizontal mirror in 2022, collaborating with intermedia artist Shomit Barua to create Degrees of Granularity at form & concept in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As viewers neared the installation, they heard motion-reactive audio created by the subtle impacts of their movements on these forms meant to disintegrate over time, much like the human body ultimately returns to the earth.
Cassano has been creating the forms by hand, imprinting each one with her own fingerprints, since 2012, when shaping the material became a way to process a hip replacement surgery. “It was my way of working through what had happened inside my body,” Cassano told Hyperallergic. “When I make them I feel connected to consciousness; my hands don’t have to be told what to do, they just know.”