04/09/2026
Embodied Trauma: Keziah Craven
Visit us to discover a visually striking exhibition inspired by history, storytelling, and cinematic scenes.
Find us at:
📍81 Denmark St, Kew VIC
🖼️ Online Catalogue now available. Link in bio.
Working collaboratively with individuals who self-identify as having experienced sexual assault, Keziah supported participants through workshops to translate their trauma into sculptural forms. These forms have been incorporated into or have inspired these wearable art garments. Shown here on the body as standalone sculptural works, they invite viewers to engage with their materiality, symbolism and emotional resonance in a contemplative setting.
Nudibranchs have informed the conceptual and aesthetic foundations of this project.
These sea creatures are not born poisonous, instead, they absorb toxins from their predators and store them, transforming external harm into a defence mechanism. This biological process resonates with the ways survivors respond with their vagus nerve, shifting into freeze, fright, or flight, mobilising their own protective defences in the face of trauma.
Nudibranchs vivid colours, rhythmic forms, and repetitive structures become a reparative aesthetic within the garments, depicted through paper craft and fabric manipulation techniques. These techniques include; folding, fraying, gathering, Korean Joomchi, Japanese Momigami. layering, paper casting, paper duplexing, papier mache, pleating, reverse applique, smocking (wave & honeycomb), stitch & slashing, trapunto and tucking. An embodiment of resilience, transformation and the capacity to transmute something traumatic into something protective, expressive and beautifully alive.
Craven’s garments explore how wearable art can give trauma a tangible presence while also functioning as a therapeutic process through which survivors reclaim their bodies,voice and agency. Through this exploration, Embodied Trauma, contributes to a deeper understanding of the transformative potential of wearable art in trauma recovery.
