Christina Stone
The Body’s Exertion
Christina Stone’s work is built through exertion—through weight, pressure, and endurance. She carves stone, stretches latex, and drags herself across canvas, marking time and space with the body’s imprint. Her practice pushes materials to their limits, demanding endurance from both the body and the medium.
“I play a lot with material limits—stretching, testing breakage points,” she explains. “The residue after an action is interesting to me. What is left behind?” Her exploration unfolds across multiple mediums: stone carvings that recall the slow erosion of water, latex inflatables that strain under pressure before collapsing, and body roll drawings that imprint movement directly onto the canvas.
Her stone pieces, shaped through force, mimic natural processes—wind and water softening once-rigid surfaces. Stone is permanent yet vulnerable, defined by its resistance but slowly altered over time. In contrast, latex is fragile, yet it holds pressure and force before breaking down. “At first, it inflated in two seconds,” she notes. “Now it takes three. Eventually, it won’t stretch as much.” The material itself ages, embodying its own deterioration.
Her body roll drawings make the act of creation visible. She melts wax pigment, pours it over herself, and throws her body onto the canvas, dragging limbs in repeated gestures. The result is a drawing of force and friction, where movement isn’t just represented—it’s embedded in the material. “It’s a record of the body across space over time,” she says. “Not just one long pass, but many passes—tracing pressure, exertion, and residue.”
Stone’s practice is rooted in endurance. “The process of carving is enjoyable because it takes so long and requires so much exertion,” she says. “It’s a battle of strength—your body interacts with the material, and the material pushes back.” She works with a backstrap loom, where the rhythm of weaving is controlled by the tension of her own body. “The process of creating this was very tied to the movement of the body,” she says. “That action felt poetic.” In performance, movement itself becomes sculptural, shifting between control and surrender, balance and instability. “I’m interested in this gray area of uncertainty—am I safe, or am I in danger? That tension and ambiguity drive my work.”
Beyond materiality, she explores the body’s relationship to space and perception. After an eye injury temporarily impaired her vision, she began questioning how art could be experienced beyond sight—through touch, sound, and movement. “A lot of art is visual, but I want to create works that people can feel. If my eyesight deteriorates in the future, these are still works I could experience.” Her pieces invite interaction—stone meant to be touched, inflatables that create sound, works that extend beyond the purely visual.
Her public art ambitions extend beyond representation into action. “There are plenty of works that bring attention to issues,” she says. “I want my work to go further—to be a call to action, something that benefits the community directly.” Whether working with stone, latex, or the weight of her own body, Christina’s work embodies the tension between endurance and collapse, force and fragility. Each piece is a physical document of labor and transformation—evidence of the body’s imprint on the world.
