Nara Lesser

Artist Statement

The two pieces entered here speak to different parts of my journey with my body. 'Attacked' was started years ago after I discovered that at least two men had been watching me in my bedroom through a gap in the curtains for months; the one who told me about it claimed they thought I knew and liked them watching. That combined with a lifetime of growing up female and fat, being variously attacked and propositioned in large and small ways since childhood, came out in this sculpture. I also called up memories of an image from Julie Taymor's 'Titus Andronicus' that's haunted me since college and my intense feelings about wanting to disappear, to become smaller, to separate myself from the messiness of a human body. I revisited and reworked the sculpture this year in the wake of the election.