2024
THE (DAM)NED
Reitze's graduate body of work produced as part of the UWA Fine Art Major. "The (Dam)ned" is comprised of two distinct sculptural installations "Walking on Eggshells" and "Nesting Dolls". Displayed in it's entirety UWA Design School FAM+24 Graduate Exhibition from 30th of October to the 6th of November 2024. Awarded a nomination for PICA's 2025 Hatched Exhibition.
“The (Dam)ned is an evolving body of work weighing the impressions of contemporary life on human female reproductive systems and maternal lineages. In our post-industrial society, environmental pollutants permeate our bodies. Heavy metals, microplastics and synthetic chemicals, known endocrine disruptors and mutagens, have been permitted to leach into our environment, wreaking havoc on our hormonal function and DNA. In the face of a catastrophically low national fertility rate and the looming threat of depopulation, these ubiquitous toxins pose a grave danger to human populations, compromising fecundity and the genetic fitness of future generations. Due to systemic negligence and logistical difficulties observing oogenesis, research on the effect of these pollutants on female fertility is lagging in comparison to their effects on sperm count and quality."
WALKING ON EGGSHELLS
The first of two sculptural installations falling under "The (Dam)ned". Displayed during it's development in Stepping into Skin, a curated group exhibition presented by Isabelle Reitze, Willow Armitstead, Matilda Fletcher, Abby Gleadhill, Roshen Ward and Isabella Richmond in UWA Design School's Cullity Gallery from the 22nd of August to 30th of August 2024. Also shown in Cullity Gallery for the UWA Design School Summer Collective from the 13th of November until February 2025.
“Walking on Eggshells” offers an imagined representation of a cellular process, the dysregulation and degradation of female reproductive structures and gametes due to bioaccumulation. These sculptural objects borrow from the visual tradition of Fabergé eggs, while subverting the element of surprise. Inside, rather than a delightful knick-knack, they offer nothing but a barren husk. They are at once hostile and fragile, materialising a duality; the vulnerability and wrath of female bodies, constantly at the mercy of corporate greed and bureaucratic negligence."
NESTING DOLLS
“Nesting Dolls” expands this idea beyond the individual, using the symbology of the Babushka doll to consider the intergenerational implications of environmental pollutants on fertility and genetic fitness through maternal lineages."
2023
SISTERS OF THE CRYPT: THE ULTIMATE SACRFICE
“Sisters Of The Crypt: The Ultimate Sacrifice” is an evolving performance work satirising and critiquing the online cultural phenomena of “stay-at-home girlfriends” and adjacent trends offering covert rejections of Feminism in the digital age as a misdirected response to late-stage Capitalism. Using crochet and found objects I have constructed a sacrificial stage on which I performatively offer up my body, financial freedom, and autonomy. Assisted by my sisters of the crypt who recite sacred incantations surrounding me, I ascend, lifted from class struggle and into the arms of my male saviour to become a “stay-at-home girlfriend” and lead a luxurious life of domestic servitude.
WOVEN WOMB
BALI STUDIO
In July of 2023 Reitze attended Bali Studio as part of the UWA Fine Art major. She produced a body of illustrative, print and collage work which was awarded Best Portfolio.
2022
UNDER CONSTRUCTION...
OTHER WORKS
