Mae Howard, Bedlam, 2026, Latex hood, medical scrubs, latex gloves, dental mouth gag, 3 x 3 inch Polaroid.
MAE HOWARD
Artist Statement
My work probes the aesthetic, material, and felt conditions of BDSM practices and leather histories as a foil to the medical-carceral industrial complex. Calling upon lineages of disabled labor economies, my work investigates the grief and afterlives of endurance practices that take place relationally, somatically, and with the spirit. My body becomes an instrument, palimpsest, operating table, and tool with which I shape and am shaped by those who I perform with. Through staples, sutures, scalpels, and needles, my body is further debilitated. Pain and flare are used as registers that can be manipulated within my work. My practice crosses the threshold between endurance performance and S/M scene: at times tangling the roles of collaborator, confidant, top and bottom, care/worker. More than a conceptual fantasy, these transfigurations of oppression and pain are ritualistic acts that turn routine encounters—from the intimacy of a doctor’s inspections, to the “othering” gaze of ableism and transphobia—into cathartic and subversive modes of expression. My work utilizes various disciplines to question the act of being witnessed during transformation.