Caitlyn Holly Main studied printmaking at Grays School of Art and then Sculpture at GSA, where she graduated from the MLitt programme in 2018. Previous projects include: speaking at the 2018 NEON digital arts symposium at the V&A, attending the graduate residency at Hospitalfields and the emerging artist residency at SSW and curating an exhibition at Assembly House (Leeds) as part of their painting programme. Previous exhibitions include ‘a thing that remembers itself’ (Deep End, Glasgow), ‘potbelly’ (Market Gallery, Glasgow), ‘Flesh&Finitute’ (GENerator, Dundee) and ‘bitter balanced silky smooth’ (The Numbershop Gallery, Edinburgh). 

STATEMENT

I am interested in using the motif of a ghost to render the body as something fluid, meagre or transparent: something not constrained to work or productivity. Ephemeral incarnations, like shadows of dissipated human presence – or a thirst for contact made almost physical, just out of focus. I wish to evoke a gentle form of haunting: a type of phantom muscle memory, evoking touch without its conclusion. This speculative emotional authenticity is a counterweight to the exhausting demands of emotional labour.

The antithesis of this ghostly body is the very physical reality of food. Flesh is palatable, a living entity suddenly made inanimate: alive then raw. Disembodiment and anthropomorphism render food strange, surreal.Concepts of nourishment are obscured whilst trying to understand the inherent politics (and morality) of food, health and wealth. Violence and domestication are surprisingly close. Rage settles itself into familiar crevices via metaphors of stewing or simmering, something boiled or seared.