Nat Decker

Star Topology
2024
Welded steel, sculpt epoxy, resin, printed vinyl, steel rotary balls, topological puzzle, aerosol paint
42in x 36in x 3in

A star topology is a network structure where all devices are connected to a central hub. Sculptural network schematics offer a framework to analyze the gravity of technological access, connectivity, and power within a barrier-filled built environment.

Mesh Topology
2024
Sculpt epoxy, printed vinyl, resin, fiber mesh
2.5ft x 2ft x .25ft

Mesh topology is a network configuration where devices are connected directly to each other, forming a mesh-like structure. The network schematic shares a pattern of distribution and decentralization with the care webs that maintain interdependent life in the shadow of infrastructural failings and exploitation.

Bus Topology
2024
Acrylic rod, cane feet, bandage
4ft x 3ft x 0.25ft

Bus topology is a network topology where all devices are connected to a single cable, called a "bus", that functions as a shared communication medium. The internet and its connection to disbursals of access, care, and connectivity provide vital supportive systems, emphasized by the use of sculptural cane legs and bandages.

Ring Topology

Point-to-point Topology

2024
Erotic Codexxx (Group Show)
Honor Fraser Gallery [Los Angeles, CA]
Welded steel, sculpt epoxy, mirror balls, spray paint, vinyl, fiber-fill, gauze
3.5ft x 4.5ft x 4ft

Poly-pusher is a welded sculpture of an Intentionally non-functional hybrid fantasy wheelchair/walker. Multiple handles recall the many hands involved in the dispersals of care, transportation, and access intimacy, as well as the feeling of infraction and violation so familiar to the disabled and hyper-medicalized body. The orientation of the handles allows for the disabled subject to face a carer, reorganizing the routine negotiations of need. The aesthetically rendered sculptural mobility device is practically inoperable, pointing to the mirrored friction of the usefulness and function of the disabled body which is not able to operate normatively within paradigms of labor and productivity.

Posturing Collapse is a performance and two-person exhibition in collaboration with Jules Chimes Gårder. Born from a shared experience of losing our mothers in adolescence, we perform the cyclical collapse of grief and defy gravity in moments of recognition. Wearing tall unfired clay shoes, we walked across a set of sculptural parallel bars, delaying the collapse of unstable material under our body weight. Tendrils reach for stable ground, exploring the spaciousness of absence. We count distances from shock, perpetually reconstituting ourselves. We crawl on uneven terrain, defining new functional heights. We rest still, knowing we are changing. Pressure delivers resistance.

2023
ON NEWART.CITY

TOUCH is a web based digital interactive hosted on New Art City. It was commissioned as a prototype VR headset experience by Gray Area and the Leonardo Criptech Incubator for the 2023 Gray Area Festival. Accessibility features were developed in collaboration with New Art City. The festival, which was themed Plural Prototypes, featured multiple digital interactive experiments in accessibility made by disabled artists. TOUCH incorporates spatial audio captioning, image descriptions that can be accessed from a screenreader friendly gallery view, and no-hand, audio indicated gaze-based wayfinding.

2024
6ft x 3ft x 2ft
Printed vinyl, grommets, fiber-fill, gauze

Digital renderings are printed on a giant stuffed pillow to evoke the domestic, private, nude, needing as demand for more space of rest and disabled erotics. Photogrammetry scans of my body explore the digital as a space affording agency to self-author the manipulation and alteration of the often desexualized disabled body.