REBODY

REBODY, an exhibition by H Boone, uses the expansive potential of non-binary gender, science fiction, and body horror to complicate conceptions of binary gender and address tropes of the monstrous trans body. By amplifying the otherness of the gender non-conforming body at a confrontational scale, the work questions the boundaries of the body and plays with the tipping point between euphoria and revulsion.

The exhibition features abstracted figures in various states of flux, unclear whether their transformation is painful or ecstatic. Fragments of recognizable human body parts are visible but appear otherworldly and slippery. Using 3D scans of themselves and other trans and gender-nonconforming people, the artist virtually rearranges and distorts these bodies, combining them with gestural biomorphic forms. These digital bodies are transmuted into physical sculptures through 3D printing and CNC routing in plastic and foam, which are then integrated with other media such as video, sound, and drawing to flesh out the world they come from.

Body horror serves as a format for the artist to play with the point at which a body becomes unidentifiable and unruly. Boone draws inspiration from monsters, aliens, and other beings beyond the human in stories like The Thing,  Jeff Vandermere’s Borne, and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy. These references to body horror have their roots in science fiction, offering opportunities to imagine and materialize speculative futures centered around embracing the unknown. By hybridizing the human body with abstracted forms in the language of body horror, the work in REBODY visually plays with ideas of transgender legibility and non-binary ambiguity. The resulting works are ecstatic, biomorphic shapeshifters caught in the throes of metamorphosis.

H Boone (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist that combines their love of science fiction and body horror with their gender-nonconforming identity into 3D printed semi-figurative sculptures. The artist intentionally glitches and reconstructs 3d scanned figures to stretch the limitations of the gendered body. They often flow back and forth between digital and traditional art processes, including VR sculpting, 3D scanning, animation, painting, and drawing. Boone utilizes the hard to pin down nature of the abstracted body and the fluidity of digital processes to probe at ideas of legibility, euphoria, and revulsion.Boone’s work has been featured in group exhibitions in Buffalo, Chicago, London, New York, and Hermosa Beach. Their first solo show, Gendered Fluid, was held at New System Exhibitions in Portland, ME in 2021. Their second, Trans/Human, took place at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art’s Project Space in 2023. Boone grew up in Midcoast, Maine, and earned a BFA in Painting from the Maine College of Art in 2016. In 2022, they moved to Western New York, where they are currently an MFA candidate and Schomburg Fellow at the University at Buffalo.