Why I Work with Wax and Plaster

Wax and plaster occupy a distinctive place in my practice because they hold two opposing conditions at once. They can preserve and conceal, soften and harden, register touch and resist it. Their surfaces carry the evidence of making, yet they can also suggest skin, bone, architecture, memory, or a body that has just left the room.

I work across sculpture, two-dimensional art, video, performance, sound, and installation, but material remains a central way of thinking. Before a work becomes an image or an arrangement in space, it begins with a physical encounter: pressure, temperature, weight, duration, and the decision to stop. Wax and plaster make those encounters visible.

Both materials are connected to representation, mourning, and living presence. They allow me to approach the human figure and its traces without treating the body as a stable or complete object. A cast can resemble a record, but it can also reveal absence. A wax surface can appear vulnerable while carrying a quiet resistance. Through these contradictions, the materials become active participants in the work.

Materials That Remember Touch

Wax is responsive to heat, pressure, and handling. It records contact with unusual sensitivity. A thumbprint, fold, incision, or softened edge can remain in the finished surface, allowing the process to stay present rather than disappear beneath a polished result. This quality gives wax a close relationship to the body. It behaves like something that can be warmed, marked, injured, repaired, or changed.

That responsiveness makes the material feel temporal. Wax never seems entirely removed from the moment of its formation. Even after it has cooled, it retains a suggestion of warmth and transformation. When I work with it, I am aware that the sculpture is the result of a series of temporary states. It passes through melting, cooling, joining, scraping, and rebuilding. The final object contains those transitions.

Plaster behaves differently. It sets through a chemical process, moving from fluidity to firmness within a limited period. It asks for decisions while time is narrowing. Its speed can be demanding, but it also creates a productive urgency. The material establishes a record of action: a gesture interrupted by setting, a surface made permanent before it can be endlessly corrected.

Together, wax and plaster create a dialogue between malleability and fixity. Wax allows me to return, alter, and disturb. Plaster asks me to accept a point of no return. Their difference is essential to the way I build form.

The Body Without Certainty

Both materials have a long association with the body. Plaster can take an impression, support a cast, or imitate a structure. Wax can evoke flesh, hair, skin, or the delicate surface of a living thing. I am interested in these associations, but I do not use the materials to produce a straightforward likeness. The figure often appears through fragments, distortions, cavities, and incomplete forms.

A representation can promise recognition while withholding certainty. The viewer may encounter something that seems bodily, then realize that its scale, texture, or condition prevents an easy identification. This hesitation creates space for another kind of attention. Instead of asking the work to explain whose body is present, the material allows presence to remain unstable.

That instability is important when thinking about mourning. A remembered body is never available in the same way as a living body. It is reconstructed through sensation, image, gesture, and absence. Wax and plaster can make this tension tangible. They can preserve the suggestion of a body while making its disappearance impossible to ignore.

I am drawn to the point where resemblance begins to fail. A form may carry the contour of a shoulder, the hollow of a face, or the weight of an object held in the hand, but it may remain deliberately unresolved. The work becomes less a portrait than a site where memory, projection, and material evidence meet.

Fragility, Weight, and the Trace of Loss

Wax is often described as fragile, though its fragility is not simply a weakness. It can bend, crack, melt, stain, and change with its environment. These vulnerabilities give the material an ethical and emotional dimension. The sculpture is not sealed off from time. It remains susceptible to temperature, light, handling, and the conditions of display.

Plaster appears more stable, but it too contains a particular kind of fragility. Its surface can powder, chip, split, and collapse under pressure. A plaster form may look architectural while remaining porous and breakable. That contradiction helps me think about structures that appear permanent but are always exposed to erosion.

Mourning is often described through absence, yet it also involves a heightened awareness of material things: clothing, rooms, objects, marks, and spaces once occupied. Wax and plaster make it possible to work with this awareness without illustrating loss directly. A surface can carry the weight of what is missing. A hollow can become as active as a solid form.

I am interested in traces that do not resolve into a single narrative. A crack may be the result of process, accident, or deliberate intervention. A cavity may refer to a body, a container, or an architectural void. The materials allow these readings to remain open, so that loss is felt through shifts in texture, scale, and presence rather than through explanation.

Between Preservation and Change

Wax is commonly associated with preservation, from votive objects to anatomical models and commemorative forms. Plaster also has a history of recording and retaining appearances through casts, moulds, and architectural studies. I work with these histories while remaining aware that preservation is never neutral. To preserve something is also to select, frame, isolate, and transform it.

A cast does not simply reproduce its source. It reverses surfaces, emphasizes certain marks, and removes the original from view. The copy can become more uncanny than the thing it represents. In this sense, plaster is useful because it makes the act of translation visible. The material bears the evidence of transfer.

Wax introduces another complication. It can preserve an impression, but it can also undo itself. Heat may return it to a state of fluidity. This possibility prevents the object from appearing entirely fixed. It suggests that memory can be held and altered at the same time, retaining a form while allowing it to shift.

The following qualities guide how I distinguish the materials in a work:

Material Physical behavior Emotional register Role in the work
Wax Softens with heat, records pressure, remains alterable Intimacy, vulnerability, transformation A surface of touch, memory, and bodily suggestion
Plaster Sets quickly, holds impressions, can chip or fracture Permanence, absence, exposure A structure of record, containment, and loss
Wax and plaster together Moves between flexibility and rigidity Tension, suspension, unstable presence A dialogue between what changes and what remains
Damaged or unfinished surfaces Reveal seams, breaks, and process Uncertainty, endurance, incompletion A visible trace of time and making

Using these materials together also changes how an installation is experienced. A wax element may appear to be melting into a plaster form, or a rigid surface may hold a soft, vulnerable detail. Their relationship can produce a physical rhythm across a room. The viewer encounters contrasts in temperature, density, color, and implied duration.

Making as a Form of Attention

Working with wax and plaster requires close observation. I have to notice when wax is ready to receive a mark, when plaster is beginning to set, and when a surface has reached a point where further intervention would destroy its tension. This attention is practical, but it is also conceptual. The pace of the material shapes the pace of thought.

The studio process involves repetition and interruption. I may build a form, remove part of it, make a mould, break the cast, or return to a surface after a period of distance. These actions are not simply technical steps toward a finished object. They are ways of testing how much a form can carry and how much it should withhold.

Wax encourages accumulation. Layers can be added, lifted, pressed together, or scraped away. Plaster encourages the creation of a boundary, whether that boundary becomes a shell, a support, a fragment, or a container. Both materials make the history of decisions legible. The work does not emerge fully formed; it gathers its meaning through resistance.

This is why I do not treat the surface as secondary. A polished surface can close down interpretation, while a rough surface can expose the conditions of its making. Neither finish is automatically more truthful. What matters is whether the surface preserves the tension that the work needs.

Space, Sound, and Living Presence

Wax and plaster are often encountered as sculptural materials, but their meaning expands when they enter an installation. Scale, distance, lighting, sound, and the movement of bodies through space can change how a form is understood. A small object may demand intimate attention, while a larger structure can make the viewer feel enclosed or displaced.

My wider practice includes video, performance, sound, and two-dimensional work, and these forms allow material presence to unfold over time. A sculpture can become a point of departure for a filmed gesture, a sound can activate an apparently static object, and a performance can expose the labor or vulnerability that a finished form conceals. Wax and plaster provide physical anchors within these changing relationships.

Living presence is never limited to the object itself. It also belongs to the viewer’s movement, the air around a form, the marks left by handling, and the possibility that the work may change after it has been installed. A wax surface may respond to the environment; a plaster edge may reveal a new fracture. These changes do not necessarily diminish the work. They extend its duration.

I want the installation to hold a quiet sense of encounter. The materials can make a room feel inhabited without presenting a complete figure. They can suggest that something has happened, is happening, or may happen again. Through this suspended condition, the work connects physical presence to memory and anticipation.

Working Principles for Material Decisions

The choice between wax, plaster, or a combination of both develops through the needs of each work. I begin with the kind of presence I want the material to establish, then allow its behavior to complicate that intention. The material is never a passive vehicle for an idea; it changes the idea as the work takes shape.

Several principles remain important in the studio:

These principles are flexible rather than prescriptive. A work may begin with the softness of wax and arrive at a hard, defensive structure. A plaster form may appear permanent before its fractures reveal how exposed it is. The most compelling decisions often occur when the expected character of a material is disrupted.

The Work Continues Beyond the Object

Wax and plaster give me a way to approach presence without claiming to possess it. They offer forms of evidence while keeping interpretation unfinished. Their histories connect them to bodies, replicas, rituals, architecture, preservation, and disappearance, yet each new work can redirect those associations.

I return to these materials because they remain capable of surprise. Wax can resist the image of softness; plaster can refuse the promise of permanence. Their surfaces hold touch, pressure, time, and damage. They make visible the distance between an object and what it evokes.

The work is therefore less about choosing a traditional medium than about entering a conversation with materials that already know how to carry memory. Wax and plaster allow me to remain close to the physical world while addressing experiences that cannot be fully represented: mourning, uncertainty, transformation, and the persistence of living presence.

Selected sculptures, installations, performances, videos, sound works, and related documentation are available throughout this archive. Explore the works and exhibitions to follow how material, body, and space continue to meet. For professional enquiries, exhibition opportunities, and collaborations, contact Alexandra Mawimbi through the details provided on the site.