Body of Pieces

Body of Pieces is the first novel by artist Joanne Masding. A work of abstract fiction, it follows two female characters, The Surgeon and The Dancer, as they attempt to interact with a series of hard-to-grasp and vaguely-defined objects (and one another) within the bowels of a fictional archive.Begun while caring for her first child and spanning the pregnancy and birth of her second, the novel considers what it is to create and add to the world, both as a maker and as a mother. Continuing the artist’s explorations from the studio Body of Pieces thinks through ideas of embodied knowledge and how the material world can be understood and translated.