Teresa Wilson
Engulfment materialises the haunting, philosophical landscape of Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold. Reduced to a vulnerable, animalistic scale, to the size of a dog, the human form hangs suspended over an unyielding metal pole, trapped in a breathless transition between the physical world and a silent interiority. Enveloped in decaying, layered wool, the figure is slowly consumed by the swirling remnants of life. Outside this arena of mystical experience sit a pair of discarded tap shoes. Once vibrant symbols of human joy and social creativity, they remain grounded while the figure hovers, levitating into the sublime.
Through these heavy, cascading fabrics, Engulfment manifests the “spongey, cavernous shapes” of the Baroque. Here, matter spills into space, blurring the boundary between the external “pleats of Matter” and the secret “folds of the soul.” Deleuze envisions these continuous levels of existence as a living dermis—a sensitive skin that wraps the animal soul. The sculpture becomes a fragile testament to these pulsating states of being, where the lines separating the body, the fabric, and the psychological depths completely dissolve into the infinite pleats of existence.
