Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Kieran Medland

Making Monsters

Newborn: 14” x 6”Grandma: 64” x 20”Sculptor: 69” x 22”Clay Baby 20” x 10”Draftsman 59” x 45”Actor: 50” x 48”Makeup artist: 72” x 32”

““I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.”– Nahum 3:6, New American Standard Version, 1995I’ve always loved monster movies. The slow reveal of a creature covered in a thick prosthetic flesh, dripping with an ’80s wetness lit by the warmth of a CRT, monsters that made you read Fangoria for the behind-the-scenes scoop. I was raised on low-budget bloodbaths. Even now, I feel most myself when I am surrounded by monsters. A monster cannot exist outside of its cultural context; it represents society's fears, anxieties, desires, and values, and brings them to life. Difference—whether ideological, cultural, or embodied—is inscribed on the body of the beast, “it is a body across which difference has been repeatedly written.”1And that's what I keep coming back to: the monster as difference. Embodied, living, breathing difference. I’ve noticed patterns in these movies where monsters echo everyday life and social behaviour. Glimpses of people I’d seen, known, been. Over and over—these creatures were echoes. Fear gift-wrapped as fascination. I was always told monsters weren’t real, but I kept meeting them. At school. On buses. At home. The stories kept lining up. It wasn’t all fiction. It had its roots dug deep into my world. The beast is a spectacle. Awe-inspiring, horrifying, strange and familiar.We engage with this beast for two hours, then, as the lights turn on, we wash our hands of it. What if the monster doesn’t leave? What if this reflection is a gateway to understanding difference and oneself? The fear and anxiety you project onto the character turns inward, then washes over you, covering you in a thick layer of prosthetics and makeup. Though monsters are fictional, honest people can become monsters, too. Anxiety breeds monsters and defines their existence. Bodies and behaviours that deviate from the perceived norm create and become something to be feared. Those who meet a societal standard of normalcy ascribe monstrous identities to those who don't.There’s danger in using bodies to make monsters. A long, bloody history of distortion. Of taking real human difference and slapping fangs on it. When did fascination become disgust? When did texture become ugly? When did you learn to fear difference? When did I?I don’t hate horror. I love monsters. I just want to challenge what we’ve accepted. What we’ve feared. What we’ve made into villains to preserve a narrative about what’s “normal.”What happens when we admit that difference isn’t a costume, or a punishment, or a plot twist — it’s reality. 1 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1996) 12”