Sui Generis

Bodies, fabric, chalk, steel hooks

Sui Generis stages an encounter between body, textile, and form. Three large geometric fabric structures—made of ripstop nylon, lycra, chains, and hooks—hang in the space like suspended membranes, skins awaiting animation. Initially inert, they come alive when inhabited by dancers’ bodies, unfolding into lusciously morphing architectures. The sculpture never settles into a fixed or completed form but exists only through the interplay of living flesh and soft material.

The title, Sui Generis (“of its own kind”), enacts a refusal of classification, taxonomy, and gender (generis). The work critiques the taxonomic impulse itself—the human drive to divide, label, and control bodies as a means of exerting power. Against this, Sui Generis embraces instability, dissolution, and unknowing.

The piece draws inspiration from the philosophy of the fold and the aesthetic of drapery in painting: folds as infinite, unstable, and generative; drapery as a way to blur the limits between subject and object. The endless movement of folds replicates the sensuous fabric of the universe, revealing forms only to conceal them again. Bodies disappear into skins, re-emerge as hybrids and archetypes, and then vanish once more into folds.

Disguise, disappearance, and metamorphosis function here as strategies of resistance to gender hierarchies and fixed identities. In performance, Sui Generis generates a space of collective hypnosis: forms shift and dissolve like clouds, pulling the audience into a trance of continuous becoming. Instability here is not a threat but the ground for sensuous knowing, where transformation unfolds endlessly and beauty is revealed as process rather than fixed form.

Video documentation and technical PDF available for programming inquiries.