Jamie Payne is an artist and designer living in Nashville, TN. He received a BA in Studio Art from Rhodes College in 2020.

His recent videos and grotesque sculptures investigate his anxious relationship with human body failure, disintegration, and breakdown.

The human body is limited as a sentient sack of meat with the power of movement. These limitations and an unawareness of my own body cause me to exist in a state of bliss and grief. I alternate between calm reflection on the inevitable and fear of the unknown when confronting disease, sickness, injury, and destruction.

I am fascinated by what my insides might look like, while having a continuous concern that my body could create a lethal or self-damaging event. I envision that my body has plastic-wrapped translucent skin so that I can see what my insides might look like. To calm myself, I translate the anxieties into foreign external objects and movements through video and sculpture. I use grotesque imagery, haunting audio, and video from personal memories or experiences. I hear my heart beating, stomach grumbling, vocal cords vibrating. I see blood running, lungs expanding, muscles tensing.

My artworks combine corporeal abstractions and disintegrating forms. They take shape as lulling, slow events with nauseating imagery. They depict alternating moments of rest and an aggressive fear of a body that is destroying itself. I find calm in the repetition. The more I see the same, the more I understand it. I find fear in the distorted or obscured images. The unknown workings are a threat. I do this as a reflection of observations of my body as it slowly destroys itself.