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ORPHANED FROM BELONGING

2021

Susan Buttner, Orphaned From Belonging, 2021, HD Film 15.34 min, with sound.  

​Developed through conversations and collaboration with women who shared experiences of bodily vulnerability and pain, Orphaned From Belonging explores how sensations, gestures, and forms of suffering move between bodies without becoming fully transferable or resolved. Sculpture, sound, performance, and film unfold through conditions of proximity, hesitation, repetition, and partial disclosure.

Across the installation and live performance film, bodies appear suspended between exposure and concealment, where gestures repeat, fragment, and remain partially held. Voice, movement, and sound operate as unstable structures through which intimacy and distance continually shift. Rather than illustrating pain directly, the work approaches the body through moments of interruption, tension, and incomplete articulation.

Developed in collaboration with participants at the Royal Academy of Arts, Draíocht Arts Centre, and Flax Art Studios, the project considers how bodily experience is carried collectively through gesture, listening, and shared attention.

The accompanying text Loud Crevice by Sue Rainsford responds to the performance film through a visceral poetic language of rupture, sound, and bodily transformation.

Special thanks to Regan O’Brien, Rebecca Reilly, Sarah Ryan, John Shanagher, Cathal Madden, Helena Gouveia Monteiro, and Matt Grove for their collaboration and support.

Click to read: L O U D  C R E V I C E, by writer Sue Rainsford, a response to the performance film, Orphaned From Belonging.​​​​

Materials

Oil on canvas, polyurethane foam, spray paint, insulation pipe sheath, jointing tape, found wood, masking tape, retort stand, cement, latex, fabric cable wire, angle joist, screws

Dimensions

various dimension

Photographs

installation view,  courtesy the artist.

Year

2021

 

 

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