I am creating new bodies and organs as extensions of my own. They come from an understanding of the body as something that holds memory, but also something that is constantly producing and changing. The female body bleeds, contracts, expands, and generates from within itself. There is no fixed boundary between inside and outside.
Internal structures and fluids become visible. In my work, organs are shifted, combined, and re-formed into new forms that distort and reconfigure familiar anatomy. Skin no longer acts as a barrier. It becomes malleable and distorted. I work through abjection by focusing on what the body expels and produces, where internal biological processes become external and disrupt the idea of the body as contained.
There is a fine line between desire and repulsion. Women’s bodies, in their natural state, are both desired and feared. I am creating new reproductives structures from organs, fluids, and reproductive forms that sit within that tension, where attraction and discomfort exist at the same time.
Bows, lace, and pearls are relics from my girlhood and femininity. These elements are not separate from the bodies; alongside the organs and structures they come from, as part of how I define femininity for myself.
I am reclaiming the monstrous.
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Meghan Stanley is a New York–based ceramic sculpture artist working across small-scale and life-sized forms. She began working with clay at a young age, but her practice deepened in high school, where she received a perfect score on her AP Ceramics portfolio. She is completing her B.F.A. in Ceramics at Indiana University Bloomington and recently presented her Thesis Exhibition with a solo show in New York City. She maintains an active studio practice in Brooklyn while finishing her degree remotely and interning at Greenwich House Pottery. Her work uses clay alongside materials such as silicone, metal, fabric, and paint to explore the body as a site of memory, vulnerability, and physical experience. Through distorted, biomorphic forms and skin-like surfaces, she incorporates elements of body horror and creates sculptures that act as documentations of the body, capturing emotional and physical sensations. Meghan’s practice investigates how touch, material, and intuition converge, building forms that carry their own histories of sensation. Along with clay and sculpture, she pursues other areas of interest such as painting, mixed-media, writing, guitar, fashion, and collecting.