UNEXHIBITED

REBECCA'S MESS / MAGGIE'S FETISH

Completed 2026.

 

People apologise to dolls—in youtube comments, on blog posts, on instagram reels, in emails, and on paper. They apologise for photographing a doll without their permission, for reading their story, for catching a glimpse of them accidentally, or for saying unkind things. Curses fall on those who violate a doll’s terms (which are usually quite reasonable: ask permission, be nice, don’t touch, etc.). Apology is the best bet to earn release, though some try mockery, or a spiritual rebuke. These things (not people) radiate bad luck and malignancy, but seem as vulnerable as they are aggressive: brittle, mistreated, and ravaged by time or poor workmanship. 

Maggie’s Fetish (2026) is a sculpture hand-carved from a spalted birch trunk, with a shroud made from painted hessian and mohair wool, and silk garments made by the artist Sgàire Wood. Obliged into certain dimensions by the trunk it was carved from, Maggie’s Fetish takes the form of a limbless figure, with eyes closed and head turned to the side. It is fashioned from materials which are made vulnerable by hard lives: spalted wood gets its distinctive patterns of dark lines from infection by fungal colonies, which meet each other and die; watered silk is put through heat and pressure to produce wavy moiré patterns in its warp. The sculpture has three steel clout nails piercing it, hammered flush with its surface, and its left nipple, genital cluster and ravaged buttocks are un-carved, natural features of the wood. 

Rebecca’s Mess (2026) is a cursed video. It contains comments addressed to dolls, and images of the sculpture Maggie’s Fetish. These comments and images (along with a transfeminine bogeywoman, and a submerged retelling of a childhood nightmare) are digested by cursing technologies, and sprayed outwards. The video becomes filthy with violation, and the video’s target is irradiated. Enduring images are composed in the eyes of any witnesses. Watching it is a bad idea. 

Link to view Rebecca's Mess available on request.