Michele Fountain

1. To Make it Real is the outcome of an inquiry into internalised shame. This kind of shame attaches itself to a person’s identity. Like a computer virus, it is memetic and contagious, enmeshing with the body’s internal operating system. Through this project, I want to investigate how chronic shame might be deprogrammed and how art might function as antivirus.

The shamegate sculptures make concrete these thought-barriers and question their impermeability. Engaging with fatphobia, homophobia, biphobia, sexism and ableism, these gates, alongside my related body of work, begin to present the shame-virus for what it is, question its reinscription and test strategies for resistance.