Skin Suit [31 Years of Age] (2025)
Shroud [Lay Me Down to Rest] (2026)

The two works, Skin Suit [31 Years of Age] (2025) and Shroud [Lay Me Down to Rest] (2026) use textile to relate back to the artist’s body. 

 

Skin Suit… was created based off of an old illustration: a nonna-like figure who was hanging a set of skin suits (sans tete) on a clothing line to dry. While the drawing is light hearted, the physical adaptation is met with mixed reviews. The artist created the piece entirely on her own, employing contortionist techniques to pin each fabric strip directly onto her body. After marking the seam lines with chalk, she undertook the painstaking process of hand-sewing the hand-dyed scraps together.

 

Relating back to a birthday suit, Skin Suit… becomes a demarcation of time, a mold of oneself, backed by the metaphor of the molting snake, and its ability to shed one skin, leaving a rendered version of oneself behind. 

 

Shroud… was created with the guidance of death doula, Jill Schock in preparation for Saubestre’s solo exhibition. The shroud is fabricated from leftover scraps; pieces that had been hand dyed with natural pigments that were the basis of Saubestre’s tapestry paintings. After having completed the shroud through assemblage, Saubestre brought the shroud to Schock to be draped over her body. Once positioned on a coffin, Schock applied melted beeswax to the shroud with a brush, using her hands to gently tuck it in place. The entire ritual lasted over an hour. Remaining completely motionless, the artist surrendered to gravity as her bones sank into the rigid wooden surface under the growing weight of the beeswax-coated fabric. As the exhibition progressed, the shroud gradually lost its structural integrity, echoing the process akin to organic decomposition.

 

Together, the works highlight Saubestre’s interest in ephemerality and physical play, while considering the body as a temporary vessel which eventually becomes an organic trace.