Photobook Sunday proof read

A labyrinth of fur
Early in lockdown I contributed a short reflection to
a LGBT+ event that was moved online. I needed a
two-minute video to go with my thoughts on
lockdown and labyrinth, so I filmed a hand tracing the
path of the rough polystyrene block I had used to
make some relief prints of a labyrinth. It was covered
in dried ink and made a rasping sound, but it worked.
from superior quality grey imitation rabbit fur. The
interior of this is made from polystyrene.
The Womb of God
The finished work is pleasingly strange. The
combination of labyrinth and fur is immediately hard
to reconcile. The recognisable, formal shape
contrasts with the thick, dark fur which is sensuous
and luxurious, but calls to mind a large animal’s body.
It is deeply tactile, soft and appealing, but also
somewhat large and forbidding. Especially mounted
on a square background of the same fur, it makes a
dark monolith in lights when the grey fur seems
black.
Films
A labyrinth is meant to be experienced, not looked
at, so I recreated the experience by filming a hand
‘walking’ the labyrinth. Nuns chanting in the
background (a positive song about love and
connection) add to the meditative atmosphere. An
endoscope camera was used to film inside the walls
of the labyrinth. This is accompanied by The Great
Round, where short loops of found footage reference
the circular motion of the labyrinth which in turn
references cosmic movement. The rabbit, the dance
and the drag queen link to the Queer Trinity.
This led to the thought of making a finger labyrinth
out of a different textured material, and immediately I
longed for fur. This would be both surreal (like the
quintessential surreal ‘objet[37]’), comforting (like a
pet animal or soft toy but particularly like the giant
rabbit of my dreams), but also bodily in a way that
could be sensual but could be gross or disturbing.
The process of design and testing included making a
stencil and cutting out two ‘flat’ labyrinths from fake
fur (one of the ‘walls’ and one of the path), from
which I decided I needed to construct a 3D labyrinth
with raised up ‘walls’. I tested ways of using
cardboard covered in fur to make these 3D walls and
‘paths’ of different widths.
In brighter light, the shape of the labyrinth is clear
and undulating and it has the air of a magical object,
or a fetish. Photographed on the altar of an old
church it looked heretical, transgressive, alternative,
threatening, but also scarily in-context with the range
of artefacts from different eras. Filmed or
photographed in closeup with a finger entering
between the fur walls, it becomes sexual. This
ambiguity surely makes it disconcertingly Abject.
Queer Trinity
Although there are serious ways of reimagining the
three persons of the Trinity, my version has a giant
rabbit (representing the mother archetype) a girl
(suffering for others), and a nonbinary adult, originally
a drag queen, bringing extravagance and celebration.
It plays with the idea of metaphors for god, a god
without a single gender, and also the belief that every
aspect of humanity and creation reflects the divine in
some way. I sketched these characters in a number of
different configurations responding to a number of
traditional representations of the Trinity and mostly
trying to adapt them into a circular format. These
include Rublev’s familiar design of three people sitting
around a table, and others that are extremely
hierarchical and male.
I made a stencil and constructed a 45cm diameter
labyrinth made from cardboard packaging covered in
honey-coloured fake fur mounted first on a square of
the same fur, then later on a larger gold-coloured
square mount. Finally, based on learning from this, I
made a larger and deeper 75 cm diameter labyrinth
Andrei Rublev, Public Domain
The table design eventually shifted as I wanted the
characters to be close to each other, and the circular