NERVOUS (BEHIND THE MASK)

Solo Exhibition by Rachel Crane

with handmade chainmail flowers by Gabrielle Koch

    Rachel Crane has committed to a weekly practice of self-portraiture. Rooted in an embodied conceptual approach and informed by experimental techniques, her methods of work shift with each phase, allowing perception to evolve with every image. Nervous (Behind the Mask) reflects on the past year of this process, returning to its earliest layers.

     Using her body and nervous system as sites of ritual collaboration with the environment, this series explores subconscious desire, the continual death and rebirth of identity, and the tension between the masked and unmasked body. Moving through themes of time, sexuality, gender, and shapeshifting form, it holds the contradictions of filth and purity, fear and love, pain and pleasure, discipline and play.

    By stepping beyond the threshold of comfort, she creates fleeting moments of intimacy where internal states surface externally, revealing the unstable and shifting nature of identity.