RCA2022 graduates ask can our ‘Bodies’ be more than we imagine?

A body can be political, an agent of expression, a fleshy cage or a tool for emancipation – across the RCA2022 digital platform, students are employing the body in all its forms. Whether as a tool for the senses, a vessel for performance or the inhabitant of spaces, RCA graduates are considering the body, its effects and its interactions in all their messy glory.

Kexin Liu | MA Jewellery & Metal

Location: Battersea North, Dyson & Woo Buildings, Third floor

In 3067, Kexin Liu translates her body’s bacterial makeup into soundscapes. Named after the number of the bacteria species detected in her body, her project investigates the millions of tiny organisms that 'constitute who she is as a person'. In 3067, Kexin embeds these bacterial soundscapes on a vinyl record coloured with Serratia marcescens – a pigment-producing bacteria that can be found on the human body.

Célia Marchessaux | MA Design Products

Location: Battersea South, Studio Building, Third floor

Célia Marchessaux's work encompasses 'a collection of tools that addresses different challenges within a woman’s journey through life.'

Titled Muse, her work challenges conversations about bodies and sexuality being met with shame. She has designed a toolkit which addresses ‘taboo’ topics to support young girls to understand their bodies. A second kit is designed to help women navigate gynaecological appointments more comfortably later in life.

Chun-Te Ho | MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering

Location: Kensington, Darwin Building, Lower ground floor

Chun-Te Ho's graduate project is an augmented reality interface for deaf people 'to localise and experience sound with a dual-senses feedback system'. Sound localisation – understanding the direction from which a sound comes from – was cited as a major issue by 80% of his interviewees during his research with the deaf community. Titled Beyond Hearing, his solution allows deaf people to intuitively know the location of sound and experience it with dual-senses cues.

Carola Ureta Marín | MA Visual Communication

Location: Battersea South, Studio Building, First floor

In CALLING LIGHTS, Carola Ureta Marín explores the impacts of eye injuries sustained by protestors in Chile during the police shootings in the country's 2019 uprising. Using eye movements as signals, the message ‘this work is a tribute to all those eyes unjustifiably lost during the demonstration in 2019, Chile’ is rendered into Morse code – the most established military way of communication – and disseminated by musicians of the Chilean diaspora.

Collection: Sniff and Savour

Gut feelings – these students are engaging all things olfactory and gustatory. Image by Albano Hernández (MA Painting).