Soma Archive
2023

The work places the body within the intersecting systems of datafication and ecological exchange. Faces, skin and limbs are fragmented into unstable visual units, recalling the ways contemporary technologies translate individuals into facial markers, biometric information, identity categories and behavioural data. Yet the body is never a sealed or self-contained entity. It continually exchanges water, air, food, fluids and matter with its surroundings.
Soma Archive I. Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm
Within the painting, the body therefore undergoes two simultaneous forms of dissolution. It is divided by digital systems into information that can be recognised, stored and managed, while liquid brushwork allows it to merge with light, water and the wider environment. These opposing processes reveal the body as both a readable dataset and an open material system. The work asks whether corporeal existence can ever be fully encoded, proposing instead that the contemporary body remains fluid, porous and resistant to complete technological capture.

Soma Archive II. Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm