Age is Written on the Body

Age is Written on the Body investigates the different ways in which middle-aged people experience and reconcile this time of their lives. By interviewing middle-aged men and women in Toronto about their experiences of midlife and by subsequently transforming their narrative responses into visual statements rendered in sculptural body fragments and interpretative text, I highlight a part of peoples’ lives often overshadowed by society’s privileging of youth. My investigation about aging and the body is framed by theories in cultural studies and social science, as well as by art practices exploring figurative representations. Drawing additionally on my personal experience, I argue that the meaning of middle age in Euro-American society is not monolithic. Rather, as evidenced in my figurative sculptures, people construct their identity as middle age in multiple, fragmented, and intangible narratives that they continue to transform throughout this midlife phase