Body Image_Daytime Scenery represents the latest development in Mackerel Safranski’s ongoing exploration of the medium of pencil drawing. As the “body image” in the title suggests, Mackerel Safranski focuses on how our bodies are perceived and constituted by others and the wider society. As though constructing a series of dreamlike montages, the artist takes elements from different incidents from contemporary life—including her own experiences, as well as news items she has read in the media, stories she has heard from others, and material that she has found online—and recombines them into new compositions. Moreover, these initially ordinary scenes are further reimagined through nonhuman beings and supernatural phenomena. In this way, the artist’s drawings become fantastical allegories delineating the complexities of the body as both object and subject of societal—and often male-centric—consumption. On view is a selection of twelve drawings from a total of sixteen in the series.
