Maddie Jones Rodriguez

MFA Fibers and Material Studies, 2025

My sculpture utilizes second-hand materials like home fixtures, pipes and fabrics to examine how arbitrary societal standards shape both individual and collective experiences. The formal qualities of my work are guided by an interest in humor and the abject. Satire often points out underlying structures within society and illuminates capricious social hierarchies. I leverage humor’s association with bodily waste to remind us of our tangible, corporeal existence. My hope is that this typically avoided physicality can serve as a point of familiarity. With these considerations I explore plumbing as a labor-intensive construction trade that underpins modern society and connect these systems to our own internal bodily processes. Plumbing is a physical web that manages our bodily functions through the geography of society. Yet it exists almost completely as a ghost within our bodies and homes, hidden underneath layers of drywall or epidermis. If all is going to plan, we can ignore its presence. But these networks can reveal pathways that link us all. By examining these systems that connect us, I aim to destabilize the boundaries between self and other. In investigating the porosity of the body, I emphasize how barriers—whether architectural, social, or psychological—are ultimately transient and permeable. 

My affinity for such common materials and reused objects comes from my personal history—my mother and stepfather work as vintage dealers, and my father is a new construction plumber. My worldview has been defined by the exchange of goods and labor, discarded objects, essential tools, and extracted value. Watching my mom and stepdad’s process of evaluating potential items for resale sparked an interest in how we derive new value from objects that would otherwise be considered “trash.” This experience has developed into the formal and conceptual starting point of my practice: that in reevaluating our relationship to waste we can shift how we relate to one another. Where Capitalism promotes independence, isolation and othering of people that are different, we can find value in this difference. Instead of only valuing humans by their productivity as measured by their contributions to labor and the economy, we can recognize one another’s intrinsic, non-extractable value.