ONE is excited to announce our latest artist-in-residence ...

Noorann Matties

Noorann Matties (b. 1994) is an artist based in Philadelphia, PA. Her work aims to translate her internal wall of sound via the systematic cataloging and organization of imagery. Matties’ practice explores wish-fulfillment, fantasy, memory, and personal mythology. Harnessing the meditative processes of beadwork and analog photography, she finds spiritual fulfillment through the flow-state of repetition.

We were delighted to host her at the archive for in-person research last November. While at ONE, she delved into the Sheree Rose and Bob Flanagan photographs and papers, the Bunny Meyer collection, and spent many days perusing our fetish and piercing related periodicals. 

Drawing from her research, Matties will be producing a series of new works for our upcoming exhibition on the queer history of body piercing: NEED ME, or, (de)mystifying the myth of the modern primitive, opening February 25 with an opening reception on February 27. 

Here’s what Noorann had to say about her residency at ONE so far! 

ONE: You have a long background in the body piercing industry, from online archive obsessions to being a piercing studio manager, to your occasional work as a jewelry photographer. How has this residency further shaped your relationship with body piercing?

NM: I have always experienced desire as a force both sacred and innate, an intuitive surety that illuminates roads I can’t help but take. While desire at odds with expectation can be a frightening experience, my time in residency at ONE Archives has both expanded and validated art-making and body modification as the major thruways of desire in my life. 

The many facets of piercing history could take a lifetime to explore, but the clear through-line is one of fundamental need. The need to seize ownership and adorn oneself with what we know to be true. The need to feel both pain and pleasure in tandem, exploring the edges of what a body can tolerate. The need for more; the needle becoming a nexus of infinite possibility, signaling separation from one identity and solidarity with another through a single point.  

Exploring the roots of modern body piercing in North America in kink and queer culture through ONE Archives collections has been a uniquely affirming and exciting experience. I’m honored to have had the opportunity to pore over so many primary sources, synthesizing them with a lifetime of pre-occupation with body modification to produce new work on a topic that feels like home. 

ONE: Can you tell us about your research experience at ONE Archives?

NM: During my time at ONE, my research spanned from piercing-specific publications (Piercing Fans International Quarterly, Body Play Magazine, catalogs and ephemera from Gauntlet, the first piercing studio,) to fetish magazines (Bizarre, Reflections, Taste of Latex) and into the personal collections of Bob Flanagan & Sheree Rose. Each of these lines of inquiry further cemented for me the well-worn path to self-actualization through transgression. A beautifully human drive to unburden the soul through pain, confinement, and taboo legible across time and subject matter.

ONE: Can you tell us more about your process? How has your process expanded and changed for this show? 

NM: My work for this show has exponentially expanded the boundaries of my beadwork practice. The first beaded works I produced focused primarily on lottery imagery, drawing from a personal fixation with scratch-off tickets and the formulaic fantasy ritual they provide. After finding my footing in the medium, I began beading images from the photo diary I’ve kept on film for the last 15 years. The mix of intentionality and abstraction inherent to beading photographs has helped me to process a personal archive of memories that often feels more like a body of work than a life lived. 

The work I’m producing for NEED ME has felt like a natural merging of the strictly-ordered visual language of my initial beaded works and the abstractive flow of beaded photographs. I’ve been able to zoom in, utilizing glass seed beads – a fraction of the size of my previous materials – and zoom out, creating one of my largest beaded works to date. Through research at ONE, I’ve been pushed to explore the universal themes present in many of my personal obsessions including surveying the routes taken before me by others who were led by their inherent desire of deeper fulfillment.

I think Bob Flanagan put it best; “Why? Because it feels good.”

Save the date for our opening reception on Friday, February 27, 6 - 9 pm. 

See you soon :)