Indeterminate Body

Teresa Chen’s subject in her series of large-format photographs is the human body. We can recognize frost-sprinkled bizarrely curled pubic hair, a female breast, an eye. But the identity of the corporeality that fills the format of the pictures can only be conjectured, with material elements dissolving into soft, blurred, coloured forms which elude our mental grasp. Rather than unfolding organically in space, the individual body parts are alienated, pressed together and distorted by a layer of transparent plastic. We are reminded of vacuum-packed meat in the deep freeze, of a horribly dismembered murder victim. The plastic — like an additional transparent surface image — transfers the female body from a pleasing nude to a different dimension of abuse and death. Like a picture behind a picture, the artist shows us the other side of the celebrated female ideal.

Brita Polzer, from the catalogue for the exhibition Young