Inside the Tightness
Inside the Tightness examines how the body is continuously shaped through overlapping social structures rather than through singular external forms of oppression. The work does not present a recognisable female figure; instead, a clustered mass of flesh-toned soft forms is compressed, bound and stabilised through aluminium wire, suggesting a bodily condition formed through sustained relational tension.
The work is informed by both Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of becoming in The Second Sex and Confucian relational ethics. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir argues that one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one through social roles, cultural expectations and lived experience. Within Confucian social philosophy, women have historically been positioned within relational systems structured around family stability, emotional maintenance and role-based duty. These frameworks do not operate as opposing systems in contemporary society, but often function simultaneously.
Within this dual structure, women are encouraged to develop individual subjectivity while continuing to carry relational and emotional stabilising roles. The soft clustered forms in the work reflect bodily plasticity, while the aluminium wire operates less as an external constraint and more as a relational structure — one that both holds the form together and restricts its expansion. This material tension mirrors how care, responsibility and relational expectation can function simultaneously as support and pressure.
Positioned close to architectural boundaries, the work suggests a learned bodily strategy of self-adjustment rather than exclusion. The work ultimately considers how the contemporary female body is shaped within the coexistence of subject formation and relational duty, gradually becoming a body written through social relations rather than existing outside them.