This wearable hanging sculpture was originally made for my workshop F THE BODY, which formed part of my dissertation at Camberwell College of Art in fall 2021. It was also shown in Dilston Grove, Southwark park gallery in January 2022 and at my degree show in June 2022. It is made from a welded steel armature covered in a needlefelted wool surface. It measures 2m x 1,3 m x 1,5m.

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The initial idea behind the piece was to make an interactive sculpture that could be worn by participants in a workshop. I wanted to invite the audience deeper into wy world and my art, and hopefully make them reflect on the strangeness of embodiment as it is often experienced by trans people. I also wanted my curiosity about evolution to be reflected in the sculpture. Donna Haraway’s example of "snaky Medusa and the many unfinished worldings of her antecedents, affiliates, and descendants" (2016, p. 52) explained to me the underlying idea behind this sculpture – that all life and matter is fluid, interconnected, everchanging and infinite. Biology/life is malleable, not unchangeable. Compared to now, reality has looked very different in the past and will look very different in the future. Time is not linear. Things are not what they seem, and we are not who/what we think we are. Based on these reflections, I decided to name the sculpture Ontoancestral Octopost – a timeless creature that represents the arbitrariness of evolution, taxonomy, and embodiment.

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