Catelyn Dittamo

One, 2026

One is a mixed media sculptural installation that reimagines the bed as a site of embodiment and psychological experience. This project advances my creative practice by continuing my exploration of transforming familiar domestic objects into uncanny forms, merging the recognizable with wet, drooping soft sculptures. It is in dialogue with my research on the abject, particularly by Julia Kristeva, focusing on the destabilization of boundaries between body and object and conscious and subconscious. My work is also informed by Janine Antoni and Do Ho Suh, whose practices engage memory, the body, and domestic space as immersive, somatic experiences.

The process of making this piece centers on saturating dyed polyester nylon fabric in dyed liquid silicone rubber. This method allows the material to absorb and transform into something new that is both textile and anthropomorphic at the same time. The result is a fleshy, wet, and dripping surface that becomes unstable and shifting as the weight pulls the thin fabric down. Here, this organic form is placed onto a white metal barred bed frame, grounding it back into a recognizable domestic structure while still distorting it into something unfamiliar and bodily.

This work externalizes internal worlds that exist in the mind, sourced from my experience of nightmares, insomnia, and depression. By turning the bed into a vulnerable object of the body, I invite viewers to reflect on their own relationship to this domestic object and how it exists as both a physical space and a psychological one.

About the Artist

Catelyn Dittamo creates multimedia artworks that explore the subconscious through familiar objects, transforming personal experiences into immersive visual and sensory encounters.

Her work examines themes of memory, identity roles, and strong visceral emotions, using mediums such as sculpture, installation, and found objects to make the subconscious tangible. These forms aim to create immersive scenes that are confrontational and question comfortability. Influenced by her own fearful and developmental childhood memories,

surrealism, and artists who investigate the uncanniness of the psychological, her pieces invite viewers to reflect on their own internal worlds while connecting with the specific narratives.

These inspirations originate from insomnia and recurring nightmares that emerged during the depths of her mental health struggles during young adulthood. Through highlighting the subject of the body, specifically flesh and organs, her work explores the process of making internal landscapes into tactile experiences by turning them inside out. Through this practice, she seeks to eventually understand how to translate the intimate, unspoken facets of human experience into memorable encounters that engage and challenge viewers.

She is currently working on ways to tackle fleeting memories and moments by challenging impermenance through focusing on the cyclical nature of grief and the metamorphosis of a young woman’s body.