Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels. a DEFECT // to DEFECT

About

An avid reader of magical realism, Bothwell Fels makes works that sits somewhere between folklore and sci-fi, an exploration of the here-now, never was, and maybe-could-be.

Fascinated with ruptures and growths, Bothwell Fels approaches sites-of-change both in body and land. Where dissected illustrations of erupting volcanoes and lactating breasts look very similar, by her hands the wood and plaster morphs into a new expression of such swellings. She turns to raw, physical materials to consider geological shifts in tangent with the places we make inside ourselves for growth.

Originally trained as a social psychologist, Bothwell Fels explores how environments can shift perceptions of being. She often works with mundane expectations of surrounding environments and subverts them into the unexpected and out-of-ordinary. Where are there seams between the real and the un-real? How does one become the other? Her architecture of affect and becoming explores the potential of curiosity as radical action in a time of disillusionment.