ANNA MAYS

The Artist

Conscious Isolation

Interview with Anna Mays

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Anna Mays is an artist from Dublin. Her practice looks at how the human body is perceived in contemporary western society and how it is shaped by rapidly advancing technologies and medicines a society, we are generally less active and are becoming more dependant on these technologies.

Mays is interested in how our contemporary lifestyle may lead to a sense of disconnectedness between ourselves and the flesh of the body. She sees this as a breakdown of the relationship which consequently results in a fear of what is going on within us – an unknown. Responding to this, her practice explores the internal body
with fascination rather than fear. She makes works through a variety of media where she can fragment and abstract the body to emphasize a sense of the unknown and increase ambiguity.

Touch is fundamental to human desire; It is also what shapes a person’s understanding and perception of the world. According to Derrida ‘Touching means “being in the world.” There is no world without touching.’ (Derrida, 2005, 140). 

Within her practice Mays explores the internal body both through the digital realm, using microscopic and radiological imagery, and as physical and material flesh, body and skin. Through the digital approach, a distance is created between a person and their body. It becomes sterilized and depersonalized and is translated into an inorganic state. These digital and material avenues of work form tensions with more raw and intimate values that are linked to life directly through touch and the incorporation of transitory materials.

By creating assemblages that combine contrasting approaches to making and visualization the artist attempts to
articulate the relationship between the organic and synthetic body that moves intermittently between conflict and balance. Through her practice, she aims to question the notions of the tangible and intangible in relation to human experience and to stimulate the sensory body through processes of vision and
touch.

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Anna Mays has just completed her degree in Fine Art Printmaking at the University of Brighton with a first class honours.