During the COVID-19 pandemic all of us have had to change our daily habits. From sitting in front of our computers all day instead of a classroom or an office, to being scared to ever leave the house again. Everything and everyone has become a threat. You never know what the other person might be ill with, they could just have something stuck in their throat but the sound of a cough makes everyone jump.
A habit that I have adapted over the last year is wiping all of my groceries and any post I receive. I wish we were able to just simply see where someone has touched and to know if that person was ill or not.
‘Instruction: Touch’ is an interactive exhibition which explores the rebuilding of our relationship with touch with items, people, spaces. I would like to construct statues representing different types of touch, such as rejection of touch, craving it, the self hug. They would be made out of air drying clay, which while drying is still malleable. The title of the piece indicated what people are allowed to do with the work other than enjoy its visuals – touch. I am interested in how the statues would change their shape over the period of a few hours as every person that passes them has a physical interaction with them.