Willa Baker Wilbraham

My practice is self-referential, with my nude body serving as the primary subject. It centres itself on themes of female auto-eroticism and is developed through both direct observation and photographic references. I am interested in how the female nude body refigures itself when looked upon. Theoretically, I allude to Feminist politics and aesthetics.

I oscillate between subject and observer, creating a persistent tension throughout the work. This tension permeates into the visual language, which exists between beauty and discomfort, the material dark, the form seductive.

I play with ways of dissolving the body. The appropriation of Cubist techniques and angular figuration become an act of resistance against the treatment of women’s bodies as mutable objects. Through this reimagining of perspective, distortion and fragmentation, I reflect on contemporary sentiments of visibility.

I’m also interested in how absence can function as a structuring presence, and in the interplay where meaning slips between revelation and concealment. The intention is to blur the boundary between eroticism and abstraction.

Drawing is at the core of my work; My process is impulsive; it relies on the energy of raw line. I work primarily with pencil and oil. My drawing style is distinct, the fragility of line is seductive, erotically charged. I build from a foundation of observation that allows me the freedom to later manipulate, distort, or simplify.

The response to my work is never fixed. One might describe it as provocative, maybe even pornographic. It all comes back to regimes of looking. That’s what I find so seductive about it.