Exhibition Statement

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Untitled (To Bear the Weight) #3 was created during the 2024 Digital Stone Project residency in Italy, where artists collaborate with CNC carving technologies and traditional hand-finishing techniques to produce marble sculptures. The work combines 3D-scanned models of the artist’s arms with architectural forms to create a structure that exists somewhere between body and building. Three arms encircle a classical column while a steel connector references methods of construction and reinforcement. Modeled to evoke the form of a church, the sculpture draws on architectural elements such as flying buttresses and a cupola, transforming the body into a load-bearing structure. By merging human and architectural forms, the work considers how bodies both navigate and sustain the systems that shape them, proposing support, interdependence, and collective bearing of weight as alternatives to more hierarchical structures.

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My work explores the relationship between the human body and the invisible systems of power embedded within architecture, technology, and other overlooked aspects of experience. I am interested in how these invisible structures of power influence our lives through cultural assumptions, social hierarchies, and design decisions that frequently go unnoticed. Through sculpture, installation, video, painting, and new media, I investigate how built environments and technologies embody values, shape our experiences, and influence how we relate to one another.

As a woman artist with disabilities, a recurring theme in my practice is the relationship of the body to architecture. Disability theory suggests that people are not innately ‘disabled,’ but that our built environment—our buildings and spaces—is what creates disability. This view led me to consider how architecture and other constructed environments, including technology, embody cultural values. For example, Renaissance architecture drew heavily on Vitruvian principles (from Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture), linking architectural beauty to the proportions
of the ‘ideal’ white male body. Through my work, I examine what happens when bodies traditionally excluded from these historical ideals are inserted into these spaces and narratives.

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My process is both idea and research-driven. To develop concepts, I work to realize a visual idea in my mind or engage in artistic research. Working across a variety of media, I choose materials and processes that reinforce the conceptual framework of each project. The needs of the work guide my choices: I may use traditional artistic techniques, artificial intelligence, 3D scanning, digital fabrication, CNC robotics, video, or found objects. Instead of favoring one medium, I use materials strategically to explore ideas.

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I have become increasingly interested in ‘structures of support,’ which I define as both physical frameworks, like architectural elements, as well as metaphorical ones. The arch is considered one of the strongest shapes in architecture, though its strength lies not in brute force or individual endurance, but in the distribution of weight across a network of supports. By distributing the weight evenly, the whole structure becomes stronger than its individual parts. I see this as a useful model for thinking about interdependence, shared burden, and collective support—ideas that offer an alternative to cultural ideals of independence and self-sufficiency. This idea of support has become a key conceptual framework in my recent works.  

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I began this exploration in 2022 by making video works in which I tried to turn my body into architectural elements such as an arch or a column. This inquiry continues as I attempt to blur the boundaries between body and building, and between support and supported. In newer sculptures and photographs, I combine casts of my arms with columns and structural forms in imagined architectural settings. Through these works, I ask how systems of power might be transformed into structures of support and what it means to share burden rather than bear it alone.

 

 

About the Artist

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Michelle Lisa Herman is a Washington, D.C.-based interdisciplinary and conceptual artist whose multi-faceted practice integrates theoretical research with feminist and disability politics. Her work spanning interactive design, fine art, and art history has been exhibited internationally at prominent venues such as the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Kennedy Center. In addition to her robust exhibition history, she shares her expertise in academia, currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Interactive Design at James Madison University. Her thought-provoking conceptual projects continue to garner critical acclaim and have been featured in major publications like The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, and New American Paintings.