→ Apparatus

Digital sculpture
2024 / 2025

In Latin, the term apparatus is ambiguous. On the one hand, it refers to a device, a complex object designed by humans to facilitate a task, and on the other, it signifies splendor, dazzling and ostentatious adornment. In the series Apparatus, these meanings intertwine: the tool for seeing becomes ornament, optics turn into jewelry, and the artist transforms into a craftsman.

The practice of self-portrait, here sculpted in 3D, is layered within this laboratory for creating devices for seeing. If Drag is an excellence in the invocation of excellence, then Vanad is in Drag: the artist invokes the craftsman and shapes them in their own image. Their instruments extend their gaze and become vectors of their transformation. The adornments they create are apparatuses designed to enhance self-observation: suspended magnifying glasses, face-covering glasses, modified hand mirrors.

The series explores the transformation of the body-as-material through the tool of vision. The act of observing one's body and face is almost universal, but in this process of dysmorphia, observation distorts and forges a new image. The gaze scrutinizes the subject for hours on end, like an artist in the act of creation. The observer becomes a jeweler of their own form; self-gazing becomes an art that demands the finest tools.

The modeling and alteration of an existing mirror, purchased at a flea market, is an attempt to create "virtual jewelry." The act renders precious an otherwise worthless object by adorning it with a precious metal while giving it a digital existence. This action is virtual and thus has a relatively low environmental impact compared to the extraction and refining of an actual quantity of silver. Through the repeated application of this process, the series seeks to address opulence and adornment as a mode of Queer identity expression, deeply rooted in extractivist imagery.