ABOUT ERICA
Erica Fitzgerald is an interdisciplinary artist that uses sculpture and mixed media to touch on topics surrounding ecology, feminism, and dominance structures. She earned her BFA in sculpture at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and is currently an MFA candidate and educator at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Statement
My practice activates foraged, environmental textiles as sculptures and performances to touch on topics surrounding ecology, feminism, and dominance structures. I consistently work in natural locations using my body as a material to document similarities women share with nature and their historical stories of being dominated/domesticated within hierarchal societies.
While examining the relationships between domesticated environments and patriarchal control through the lens of art and ecology, we can further strengthening conversations about conservation and human impact. Recycled, found, and repurposed materials reflect a connection to landscape, fertility, labor, natural environments, and the body. In contrasting natural and synthetic materials to construct artifacts, these pieces take on elements of reclaimed environments and assemblages of growth that can form in both nature and the human body.
Touch negotiates the relationship between land and reproductive bodies. My body is left wondering how we’ve become so similar yet so separate as we occupy the same space.