Muscle as Sign: Terrain — ROAR

Muscle as Sign: Terrain was presented in ROAR, the Swanfall Annual Exhibition 2026, at Mall Galleries in London from 24 to 29 August 2026.

Muscle as Sign: Terrain examines how muscle moves from bodily form into a visual sign, and how that sign shapes ideas of masculinity. I began with Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, particularly his account of how cultural values come to appear natural. Strength and self-control are often read directly from a muscular body, as though these meanings belong to the body itself.

I photograph shoulders and torsos at close range, using black and white to reduce the body to light, shadow, texture and weight. The tight framing removes the face and other markers of identity. At first, the images may resemble hills, ridges or geological surfaces rather than a male body. This uncertainty interrupts the familiar reading of muscle as proof of masculine identity.

The resemblance between body and mountain is also symbolic. Mountains suggest solidity, height, endurance and conquest. These associations overlap with familiar expectations of masculinity, but the photographs do not fully support them. The body can appear monumental in one moment and exposed in the next. Its surface seems solid, yet it is also soft, vulnerable and temporary.

By turning the body into a terrain, I want to make the cultural values and visual conventions surrounding masculinity easier to notice. The work asks how repeated images teach us what strength should look like, and how those expectations enter the way we judge and shape ourselves.