Melanie A. Hill

Cicilium (Hairshirt)
hand-felted wool, hair, steel
7 x 7 x 4 in.

In my work I examine the religious practice of penance – acts of self-abasement or devotion – as a way of thinking about woman’s everyday struggle in culture. In the same way that western religious culture rejects the physical, the material, in lieu of the spiritual, culturally, women are also compelled to deny the body and its emissions in order to conform to social norms of beauty and behavior.