What does it mean to belong to space, and to be shaped by it?

For Yasmin Watts, sculpture begins with an interest in the relationship between the body and the environments we inhabit. Space is not simply around us. It can affect how we move, how we feel and how we understand our place within it.

Her work considers how physical and inner states can meet through sculpture. Figures are placed within intimate spaces, enclosures and structures where the boundaries between body and environment can shift. A space may suggest retreat, transition, connection or separation without defining what the figure is experiencing.

Watts is drawn to what happens between things: between the figure and its surroundings, between concealment and revelation, between movement and stillness. Light, openings, surfaces and changing perspectives become part of this relationship, allowing a sculpture to unfold differently as it is encountered.

Her experience of living between cultures informs this interest in how we inhabit places and carry memory through them. Her Zoroastrian background and diasporic identity are part of this wider understanding of belonging, continuity and change, but they remain one thread within a broader exploration of what it means to inhabit space.

The work develops through transformation. A figure changes through making, scanning, printing and returning to the hand. Materials are cut, joined, layered and altered. Nothing remains entirely fixed. Each stage leaves a trace of what came before.

I don’t begin with answers.
I build to ask.
I layer until something begins to breathe.

There is a sense of discovery in this process. The sculpture develops through looking, making and responding, allowing unexpected relationships to emerge between body, material, light and space.

These are not spaces created simply to contain a figure. They are places that hold without owning. They create room for uncertainty, reflection and recognition.

The motive is not to explain an experience, but to give it physical presence.

To make space for what is felt, remembered and still becoming.