Age is Written on the Body investigates the different ways in which middle-aged
people experience and reconcile this time of their lives. By interviewing middle-aged
men and women in Toronto about their experiences of midlife and by subsequently
transforming their narrative responses into visual statements rendered in sculptural body
fragments and interpretative text, I highlight a part of peoples’ lives often overshadowed
by society’s privileging of youth. My investigation about aging and the body is framed by
theories in cultural studies and social science, as well as by art practices exploring
figurative representations. Drawing additionally on my personal experience, I argue that
the meaning of middle age in Euro-American society is not monolithic. Rather, as
evidenced in my figurative sculptures, people construct their identity as middle age in
multiple, fragmented, and intangible narratives that they continue to transform throughout
this midlife phase.

• http://www.dianameredith.com/