We are all familiar with the feeling of being restricted physically and emotionally – both by ourselves and others. Even before the pandemic, our flesh-and-blood bodies have been restrained to office chairs under artificial lights; our corporeal sense of Self displaced by 2-D avatars – flat, cold, glitched and distant. Emotional bondage is a self-perpetuating web – the more others subjugate their will, the more you feel pressured to conform. Freeing ourselves from self-flagellation and capitalist fetishism is difficult when anxiety is intermingled with pleasure. ‘Of Human Bondage’ explores subjugation through a variety of themes: socially constructed gap between motherhood and sexuality, convergence of shame with desire, increasing divides between body, nature and technology, the collective yearning to reconnect with our cross-generational heritage, our body and environment. Materials such as paper and textiles were used as a stand-in for skin. They were repeatedly treated and mistreated – scarred, stretched, worshipped, torn, perforated, stroked, wrinkled, penetrated and impregnated with hot wax, cut, exposed, liberated and adorned.