Body Pillow
Jade Foxx
See it On Campus: Level 1
Visitor InfoYou can find Body Pillow on display on the first floor, near the eastern entrance - across from room D1390 and in front of the Production Studio.
Inspired by mainstream anime body pillow covers, Body Pillow is a life-sized acrylic self-portrait of Jade Foxx; a tryptic that blends themes of beauty, horror, pinup, and kink, with a bright colour scheme.
Body Pillow depicts a monochrome purple feminine form adorned with gold jewelry, lying on a bed of moss; wearing black leather high heels, stockings, a bra and a collar. Their torso is open, exposing their musculature, teal ribcage, spine and pelvis, pink kidneys, intestinal tract, and uterus. Foxx found the process of painting on this scale very cathartic – detailing their portrait with tattoos, freckles, and scars as accurately as possible, and found excitement in their insecurities.
Jade Foxx, Acrylic, 24 x 70″, 2024
Portfolio
A selection of my favourite works from throughout my degree.
A Day With Mom Cat (2021)
A short ‘slice of life’ comic that loosely details a typical day between a young adult and their childhood cat.
For Irene (2023)
For Irene is a very special project dedicated to my late grandmother. The piece is a re-articulated blacktail fawn skeleton on a floating shelf with preserved moss, pinecones and other blacktail deer antler sheds. For Irene took three years to complete, starting in May 2020, the day after my grandpa’s passing, and was completed in May 2023, three months after my nan’s passing. I decided to dedicate this project to my nan, Irene, because of her love for bone collecting, but also because she is the reason I came to study at Emily Carr; to follow in her footsteps.
A note on how this deer and I came to know each other:
In the winter of 2019 when my mum and I were living with my grandparents on Salt Spring Island, just up the road from our house, our neighbourhood’s resident blacktail doe lost a fawn in the creek next to the road. We’re not entirely sure how he died, but I speculate that he’d gotten stuck in the snow down the embankment and froze in the water. My mum found him while walking the family dog and then showed me. We said a few words for him and had a moment of silence.
Over the next few months, I kept an eye on the little deer, intent on retrieving his body and memorializing him once the scavengers, rodents and insects had all had their fill. It was important to me to let nature complete its course before I would take over. On May 6th, 2020, I climbed down the creek with a pair of gardening gloves and some plastic grocery bags and retrieved nearly the entire skeleton. I learned the processes of maceration and degreasing to clean the bones without chemicals that would harm the environment, and when they were ready, I began a first attempt at putting my friend back together.
Once my studies began at ECUAD, first-year, second-year and some unfortunate circumstances consumed my focus, so my poor deer sat in a Rubbermaid bin for a year and a half before I was ready to try again. The opportunity to finish this project presented itself in January 2023 for a term-long project for a third-year course. Feeling more prepared, I bought a small Dremel to drill holes into the bones, a long roll of thin wire and some epoxy clay, re-collected my deer skeleton reference photos, and got to work – figuring it out as I went. I hoped to be done in time for Nan to see it, but she passed away that February. My motivations changed after her passing, and I found myself working on my deer not as a project anymore, but as a way to feel connected to her. In taking my time with the bones, placing and tacking them together carefully, before adding the clay to sculpt and secure everything in place, I could feel her with me.
