Elena Bentley – Hello, Allison! I’m genuinely excited to meet you and talk about your work. I’m a huge fan. I tend to be drawn to work that’s a bit surreal, absurd, unsettling. Work that is bold and uses vibrant colours. Work that makes me think and feel things. And your work does all of that and more.
Our upcoming Fall issue, which is Vol. 52.1 and will be out in early October, features a handful of your pieces from The Living Room, What is Hidden By What We See, Lievito Madre, and Deflection. In the descriptions of these collections, you refer to the pieces as self-portraits. My first question is, for those readers who might have a particular assumption of what self-portraiture is, or should be, can you talk a little bit about how your work seems to re-define the concept of self-portrait?
Allison Morris – For me, self-portraiture happened naturally within my practice. It was always my instinct to work this way because I feel a lot more connected to the work that I’m making. Even when I’ve tried to photograph other people for projects it doesn’t feel right. It feels like I’m imposing my ideas or what I’m trying to say onto another body. My work is so intertwined with my own experience of having a body that it feels like the only way to do it.
Self-portraiture is really interesting and important when it comes to women’s bodies, in particular, because so often someone else is gazing upon that body. So to get rid of this idea of the male gaze, or even the gaze upon a body, and be in control of that whole environment in producing an image, has always been important to me.
EB – That’s so interesting!
I notice that these collections range from 2014 to 2024. I wonder, has your work or style or approach changed over the last decade? What has stayed the same?
AM – This is a really big topic for me lately. I’m still digesting this, but the more that my practice develops, the more I find I’m not using my body as much. I’m using stand-ins for my body, or a combination of my body and objects that are being used to look like a body or an extension of my body. There is less of a division between my body and the work as it becomes more personal.
My work has always been about how objects interact with and are used to extend our bodies or create masks for our bodies. And that’s becoming more and more important to me. So there’s definitely some kind of progression happening that I’m really interested in continuing to explore.
EB – That’s interesting. As you get more personal, your personal body gets further away.
In a lot of your works, I can tell you’re in there. But how often is it just a mannequin, for example, or a pillow or another object? Or are you always hidden somewhere?
AM – I think there’s always some piece of me in there. But I do really like having the viewer not know. These objects that we surround ourselves with and decorate our bodies with can say so much about the body. What actually is the body or the person within? What is the object that’s external? I like blurring that line.
EB – For sure!
I noticed when I was going back over your work, there’s no, or very little, exposed flesh. Was this purposeful?
AM – I like that you’ve noticed that. It is purposeful, and for me it’s been a strategy, becoming almost an avatar in the images. Hopefully, covering my body makes me more anonymous. I’m hoping this leaves space for the viewer to put themselves within it and bring out their personal experiences when they’re looking at the work.
EB – That makes a lot of sense. Speaking of the things you use to cover up your body, or body parts, you use a lot of traditionally domestic fabrics like bed sheets and table cloths. In Leivito Madre, which I absolutely love, you’ve managed to create quite haunting images. There’s like a spectre or ghost or presence or phantom in the space, which is really highlighted by the way you’ve made the fabrics float.
In What is Hidden By What We See and The Living Room, I also notice a lot of vintage clothing and textiles and patterns. I’m not sure nostalgia is the right word, but why is this vintage feel important?
AM – It’s always been a consistent thing throughout my practice, using found textiles and fabric in general. Fabric is a really interesting material to me. It’s a solid material, but it can be so fluid and can be manipulated into different shapes. I think that echoes a lot of what I’m trying to do with my own body, so it feels like an extension of those ideas.
A lot of my work uses heavy pattern and florals. Floral is a sort of beauty standard. It’s like this thing that doesn’t last forever, but gets woven into fabric at its peak, at its most beautiful, and is arranged. It’s interesting to me, when you’re thinking about beauty standards and what we’re told our bodies are supposed to look like. It’s a kind of frozen-in-time textile.
EB – I’ve never thought about that. I can’t think of when I’ve seen dying or wilting flowers on fabric. It’s always buds or petals. You’ve made an interesting observation on beauty standards, but also the standards for aging women and desirability.
I’m curious, why use photography to challenge these ideas of beauty and femininity? Why not use oil or acrylic, or some other medium? Who has influenced or inspired your work?
AM – Photography has always been an instinct to me. The instantaneousness of it I find very satisfying. I spend a lot of time researching, so once I have a camera in my hand I know exactly what I’m going to be making. Everything is pre-planned and sketched out. In a lot of my images, I’m creating sets and putting objects together. Photography has always been this interestingly satisfying way to document. Although, I will say, I’m slowly starting to allow myself to think in terms of sculpture and get away a bit from the flat image and allow things to just be what they are when I make them.
It’s always hard to narrow down, but I feel like I can’t go without mentioning Cindy Sherman’s work. With her self-portraiture and disguise, her work has been such an inspiration for me. I also love Carrie Mae Weem's work. Meryl McMaster, who I saw has been one of your featured artists, so that was really cool. Suzy Lake. Louise Bourgeois. I love that she works a lot more in sculpture and with fabrics as well.
EB – Do you have a type of camera that you prefer to work with?
AM – The equipment has never been very important. The camera is just a tool to document an idea or thought, so it’s been less of a focus for me. I always shoot digitally. It makes more sense when you’re in front of the camera and behind it. I can alter things as I go, and I can kind of see what’s happening as I go along. With film, it would be a completely different process, which could be interesting to try. Digital gives me a little bit more control in the moment.
EB – That makes sense. You don’t want to have to go and develop it and hang it. You can adjust yourself right there.
Throughout the last decade, has being both in front of and behind the camera taught you anything about yourself?
AM – As my practice naturally built itself around these topics of beauty standards and what we’re told a body is supposed to be, it really opened my eyes to how often I’m thinking about these things and how much weight that holds for me. I worry about how I’m presenting myself and is it okay to go outside of the norms. Over time, I’ve been grappling with allowing myself to exist as I am and not fitting into those moulds we’re shown that don’t really exist.
EB – On the topic of presenting yourself, when you were creating Impersonations, for example, and looking on social media, did you see yourself in the archetypes you captured for this collection? Was this kind of self-awareness there yet, or was it the little inklings of what would come later?
AM – That was one of the first projects I did outside of school on my own. It did definitely come from looking at images on social media and how people present themselves. I photographed them as shells you could step into. It’s a way of saying how simplified images can make a person seem.
I learned that you can’t just fit into one. There’s always little bits of a person going outside of these different archetypes, so even though they look clean and cookie-cutter, it’s just not real. It’s interesting in relation to social media because a lot of it is depicting something as perfect and aestheticized perfectly, but that’s just not reality.
EB – Speaking of aesthetic perfection, I’ve pulled up The Living Room on the screen in front of me. How do you come up with these ideas? Where do they come from?
AM – I wish I knew, actually! I’ll talk about The Living Room, specifically, because it kind of started during COVID. Of course, I was home a lot more, as we all were, and I remember distinctly having this feeling of almost melting into my apartment. I kept feeling like I am part of this apartment now, I’m melting into it.
Throughout my practice, as I was saying, I’m thinking about objects and how there’s this kind of blur between the object and the body, and so I just started thinking of myself as furniture. I was also working on building away at this dollhouse I have, and it felt a lot like taking care of a body, in a really strange way. I bought this dollhouse already built, but I sanded it down and I repainted it and filled the holes in the wood. I was working with this new material, and it just kept reminding me of how I take care of a body. I started to meld with this idea of the home, and that’s where a lot of that project really came from.
EB – I love that explanation so much!
I’m wondering, do you do any of kind of post-production?
AM – I do some post-production, but it’s never really very drastic. A lot of it is altering colours and making things a little more unnatural. It’s a very effective way of creating unease in the viewer. For the most part, I don’t do a lot of stitching together in my images. There is a little bit, but it’s not a huge part of my process.
EB – Do you have a space that you prefer to work in? At home, or a studio, or a mix of both?
AM – I’ve never had my own studio, so everything I’ve ever done I’ve made within my home, and I think that influences my work and how I work in a lot of ways. I would love to have a studio one day, but that’s something I’ll work towards.
EB – It’s certainly fitting, working from home, since your work focuses a lot on domestic spaces.
Is there a topic that you haven’t covered, or that you want to?
AM – We’re talking at an interesting time in regard to my practice. I’m starting to think a lot more about tackling my experience with chronic illness over the past few years, and it’s been leading me down a rabbit hole of new things that I’m interested in. I’m researching a lot on the medical history of women’s and non-binary peoples’ bodies, and also fashion history. It’s been really interesting to overlap those two areas of research and see how much goes into the external, over-analyzing of our bodies and how little has gone into understanding our inner bodies and how things work.
There’s a lot that I’m digesting, and I think it’ll probably be a much more personal body of work. It’s still melding together, but I think that’s what’s coming next.
EB – I’m already interested! On a personal level, I was born with a muscle disease, so I’m very intrigued to see where you go with this new project. Especially the fashion aspect.
For our last question, do you have any events, shows, exhibitions, anything that you want to share, plug, tell us about?
AM – I just had a show close last week in Toronto at the Gladstone House hotel, which was for The Living Room. Right now, I’m diving in and focusing on creating more work, so I actually don’t have anything lined up. It’s kind of nice. I’m allowing myself to look into things and read and feed my practice. Hopefully it leads to a new project and something I’m excited to share.
EB – That’s great. I know what you mean, though. It’s nice to have those in-between times to create new work.
AM – I’m really trying to embrace taking time to make things because it feels more rewarding when I allow myself to go a lot deeper into it.
EB – I agree. Thank you very much! It was awesome talking with to you, and learning a little bit more about your process and insights. I’m excited for our readers to see your work in the issue!
AM – I’m very excited to see it all come together. I’m so happy you thought of me.
[This interview has been edited for coherence, clarity, and length.]
Learn more at allisonmorris.ca.
