"Each expression captures a conflict between the flesh and spirit that later metamorphoses into a dance."
As a visual storyteller, Christine Sopata balances narratives with allegorical imagery, nourished by the Bible, nature, and ephemeral happenings. This work documents the progress of healing and understanding the mind and spirit within the flesh. This investigation took various forms as necessary to capture a moment of the internal transformation of the soul. Whether through a mindless bodily explosion on canvas, through revealing imagery within wood grains, or through the act of self-casting a performance to manifest a revelation, each expression captures a conflict between the flesh and spirit that later metamorphoses into a dance. Which then recognizes its placement, unifying the body, mind, and spirit and freeing the soul.
The series, “Incomplete Metamorphosis Stage Two: Face to Face,” uses the practice of self-casting and putrefying the surface. The process begins by wrapping the body in clear tape to construct a shell, symbolizing the releasing of a virtue buried beneath elements belonging to the flesh. The performance is then conducted with molds of distorted limbs and trunks of the body, creating a pose that echoes an internal battle. From there, the spiritual phenomenon continues to push and pull throughout the psyche and over the body that was built to help refine its origin.
Christine came to recognize her artistic practice as a “divine language,” a language that is familiar but can never fully be wrapped around the mind to understand completely. However, encouraged by the sensation of leaving reality and embracing one that is either written or found within nature, she continues to reflect on those central insights with observations of the physical world to gain a better understanding of being. In layering materials, Christine continues to portray the face with the language of the divine.
