Holly Silius’s NSFW Polaroids strip back the layers of the human form

Instant and intimate, a Polaroid picture can cause you to view someone in a different light or, maybe more accurately, expose a different facet of their personality. As a format, it’s synonymous with the bedroom, house party, or backstage, away from the glossy backdrops and flashing lights. As the British-born artist Holly Silius says ahead of her new exhibition, Polaroids and Body Prints, it also captures a “spontaneous” moment, which can then be augmented and recontextualised over time.

Over the course of two decades, Silius has worked across a variety of disciplines, including SFX make-up, photography, wearable art, and body casting, crossing paths with everyone from Billie Eilish and Kim Kardashian, to Pussy Riot (see: the protest group’s public art project #Pussyverse). As a result, it’s no surprise to see some familiar faces cropping up in the latest exhibition, with Hari Nef, Amber Valletta, Kiernan Shipka, and Soko posing as models, though Silius suggests that fame rarely gets in the way.

More importantly, the artist adds, the photos aim to highlight their subjects in all their layers of complexity. These layers are figuratively and literally built up by Silius through  the addition of inks, used to both obscure the body and bring parts of it into focus, echoing the face, flesh, and make-up inside the frame.

As suggested by the show’s title, the images are also presented at Central Server Works alongside vibrant, Yves Klein-style body prints, first developed by Silius for a Tate Britain show in 2016. Although there are years between the two phases of work, they’re united by an ongoing interest in (and celebration of) the human form and the depths it contains within. Below, the artist tells us more.

Firstly, could you define what it means, to you, to celebrate the human form in Polaroids and Body Prints? 

Holly Silius: For me, [it’s] about the body in all its handsome glory – not sexualising it, which the media continually punishes us for. I hope to move past this, as it has been depicted throughout art history over thousands of years.

What do you find special about Polaroids? 

Holly Silius: The format captures a moment in time when it feels spontaneous with [a] person, which is the first layer. If I apply makeup, it adds another layer. This moment passes very quickly. The photo itself is the third layer, and then the ink becomes the fourth, fifth, and sixth layer, sometimes applied over weeks or months. I also became intrigued by Peter Beard’s work, and loved how he used his blood on the images, which to me added an extra layer of electricity.

How do the body prints interact with the photographic works?

Holly Silius: While they are entirely different bodies of work, with a three to six-year gap, they all fall under the umbrella of augmenting and adorning the body in layers. This concept is consistent across all my works, including sculptures, paintings, and photos. 

For the Tate Britain body prints, it was a collaboration defined by specific colours not in my normal palette. It was about paying homage to Rang Baranga [a 1969 sculpture by the British-Pakistani artist Rasheed Araeen]. My idea was simplistic, yet involved layers and drips, using the body as a layer, followed by paint. This concept echoed the face, makeup, photo, and the ink on top, dripping and swirling organically. I would blow the ink, water it down, and see where it went on the image, then manipulate where it stopped and started.

Hari Nef, Soko, Ever Anderson, and Amber Valletta all feature in the show as models. What do each of them bring to their respective portraits?

Holly Silius: All the people in my images are incredibly kind and interesting, which is why I ask[ed] if they would consent to me taking their picture. Some I worked with repeatedly, others only once or twice. At the time, I didn’t know what I was going to do with the images, but in the moment, I felt the desire to capture that instant, and liked their energy. The layer of ink often came sometime after. It was very spontaneous.

Does fame influence the way you perceive your subjects? 

Holly Silius: I forget how famous some people are that I work with. I only remember if I feel intimidated by their publicists. People are complex and multifaceted, and they want to share their creativity too.

Movement and the body are key themes throughout all of your work. Why do you think you gravitate to that as a subject? 

Holly Silius: At university, we had to study Eadweard Muybridge’s work, which explores the anatomy of human body movements. I would have printouts of these movements all around my workspace, as they helped me sculpt whatever piece I was working on. I cherished his books. Additionally, I trained for 16 hours a week in competitive swimming from the age of seven to 17 years old. I also rode horses, ran cross country, and participated in triathlons. Movement never ceased for me; it’s a part of me, and I was obsessed with muscle definition. I was constantly surrounded by it.

The images in the show seem to focus as much on erasing the body as exposing it, though. Could you talk a bit about this process? 

Holly Silius: My primary interest lies in adorning the body and the photos, rather than erasing them. However, your interpretation is intriguing. I can see it in the gaps, where parts of the body are absent in the body prints, which can be seen as erasure. I never thought about it that way before, and now I can see that in how I paint over the Polaroids, I’m erasing certain aspects of them too. Most of the time, I'm making a benign area more interesting with the ink, almost giving a halo effect to my subject, as if to showcase them.

What do you hope people take away from the show? 

Holly Silius: The message I hope people take away is intrigue about layers, and question[s] about the wide range of facets that people have. You cannot be adequately understood or described by a single quality or trait. 

Polaroids and Body Prints runs at Central Server Works from December 2, 2023 to February 2, 2024

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