Black, 2023.  Charlotte Richardson-Deppe. Soft-sculpture installation.

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A spider’s web, for trapping and consuming; a fisherman’s net, for catching and harvesting. Bodies get stuck in these structures, thrashing to get out. A net in the circus: spread out across the whole arena, underneath the flying trapeze or the high wire: safety, safety.

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Growing up, I performed aerial arts in a circus, where a web of interdependence keeps you off the ground. In my own body now, I feel the residual stretch, tension, and ache the circus left in me—remnants of bodies defying gravity by holding one another up.

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Our bodies in all their glory of contradictions: they are the home we can never leave.