Elaine Cameron-Weir’s sculptures combine metal, glass, concrete, and stone with ephemeral elements such as flame, scent, and light. They can resemble surgical instruments, laboratory equipment, torture devices, instruments of fetishism, military gear, or medieval armour, mixing protection, pleasure and pain in a precarious balance. The works’ somatic effect is accentuated by elements that bear the imprint of traces of the body. Low Relief Icon (Figure 1) and Low Relief Icon (Figure 2) (2021) is made of factory conveyor belts counterweighted by metal caskets used by the US military for transporting bodily remains, each illuminated by flicker lights and resting on a metallic floor originally designed to hide electrical cables. Adorning the pewter disks on the conveyor belts is the repeated image of the crucifix, invoking the hero narrative of individual sacrifice that obscures actions of a State that treats life as disposable. Made from a repurposed funerary backdrop and illuminated by neon and spotlights, Right Hand Left Hand, Grinds a Fantasizer’s Dust (2021) stands as a portal luring into a false promise of salvation, reflecting on the persistent exploitation of life. Cameron-Weir’s hybrid objects evoke the merging of body, technology, and machine, formalising the porous entanglement between the human and the non-human.
Liv Cuniberti
