The sculpture never resolves into a complete body. Its outline suggests an ear, a footprint, folds of tissue or an uncertain bodily trace. I wanted these references to remain open, allowing the body to be sensed without being fully identified.

The materials make this tension physical. Soft, stuffed textile forms press against the rigid aluminium skin and are stitched and bound in surgical mesh. The mesh both supports and restricts. Something intended to hold and protect can also contain and exert pressure. I was interested in this contradiction, and in how it echoes the ways an ill body can be cared for and managed while much of the effort involved remains out of view.

Pearls sit within the textile like small, luminous traces. A pearl forms around an irritant, gradually enclosing what has disturbed it. I was drawn to this process as an image of protection and adaptation, of a body finding ways to continue while carrying what has affected it. The pearls introduce tenderness without turning pain into resolution. They soften the wound without erasing it.

Although the mirror remains physically intact, the forms surrounding it appear swollen, stretched and under pressure. Its reflective surface can return a coherent image while the body around it suggests everything that image cannot disclose. I wanted the work to invite a slower kind of looking, one that leaves room for what is incomplete, uncertain or not immediately visible.

These questions developed in dialogue with Dr Elisabetta Crovara’s research into how chronically ill women negotiate working from home. I became particularly interested in the expectation to remain present, available and productive, and in the bodily strategies that can make this possible while remaining unseen. Pacing, rationing energy, managing pain, resting, withdrawing and pushing through can all become part of the quiet work of continuing.

Echoes of the Unseen questions the assumption that seeing produces understanding. It acknowledges the distance between the image a body presents and what that body may be carrying: pain, care, adaptation, retreat and the effort of sustaining oneself under pressure. What remains unseen is not absent. It presses against the surface.