Stone House Art Gallery is pleased to present, Bodily Autonomy, a collection of recent works by Michigan based artist, Lyndsi Schuesler. In this series, Schuesler uses wool felt for its corporeal qualities as a protective yet penetrable surface in direct reference to the human body. The collection of handmade works examines an affective relationship between boundaries that exist as permeable, intertwined, and enmeshed. While the material of each work remains natural, a dichotomy of sorts is established by the work’s brilliant man-made chroma and objective reference to signage. Through this poignant object representation, Schuesler’s fiber works examine the impact of governing forces on the natural discretion of one’s health and movement. 

Sagging and stretched, the wool creations in Bodily Autonomy are disguised to alter our flow of transportation and movement, yet fall short in their material ability to uphold authority. What would at glance be a commanding sign to yield or use caution, becomes a flacid shape of despairing communicative ambiguity. A traffic cone slouches bearing little weight to disrupt its inevitable fall should a breeze pass. A fence provides closure for no one and nothing, and dares to tangle with any trespassers. Their tactile fragility suggests a mirrored succumbing to the presiding forces in power. The literal semiotics associated with governing our bodies are broken down in these works to describe a dissatisfaction with such constrained freedoms. In this series, these wool sculptures attempt to transcribe the objects that bind our autonomy, while providing inquiry into our affective bodily relationships with established socio-political governments.

Bodily Autonomy was on view at SHAG throughout the month of February 2021.