Abstract

BodyRevolt examines the body as a mutable site shaped through performance, material intervention, and photographic mediation. Working across still and moving image, I stage choreographic interactions between my body and constructed forms—materials that function as both extensions and substitutions—destabilizing the notion of a fixed bodily truth. Through acts of sculpting, contortion, and repetition, I explore the tension between the body I inhabit and the body I imagine, using the camera not simply as a recording device but as an active participant in rehearsing transformation. Central to this inquiry is the construction of surrogate bodies, which offer a form of control and possibility unavailable to my own physical form. These fabricated bodies become sites for negotiating desire, projection, and dissonance, reflecting an ongoing struggle with bodily perception. Drawing on the radical movement language of Butoh, particularly Tatsumi Hijikata’s performance Revolt of the Body, this series situates my practice within a lineage of artists that reject idealized corporeal norms, embracing alterity and transmutation. Like Butoh, my work prioritizes strain, excess, and instability, foregrounding the body’s capacity to resist refinement and instead inhabit states of becoming. Through this convergence of performance, materiality, and image-making, I propose the body not as a fixed entity, but as an evolving constructed shaped through acts of resistance, imagination, and embodied negotiation.

Publication Date

4-26-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Photography and Related Media (MFA)

Department, Program, or Center

Photographic Arts and Sciences, School of

College

College of Art and Design

Advisor

Joshua Thorson

Advisor/Committee Member

Juan Orrantia

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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