The Story Behind "Made of You"

Made of You

North Atlantic Right Whale

48 x 38 in | Graphite on Yupo | 2025

The North Atlantic Right Whale is critically endangered due to ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear—especially buoy ropes—and noise pollution that disrupts migration and communication. Only about 370 individuals remain.

Historically hunted for their baleen—once used in items like corsets, hairbrushes, and umbrellas—these whales were exploited to shape human beauty and fashion. In this drawing, a girl’s baleen-bristled brush becomes a symbol of this intimate, gendered history of extraction and its connection to environmental violence. Made of You quietly invites the viewer to consider how the pursuit of human aesthetics has left its mark on the natural world, and how those marks linger in the body of another.