'In The Mind - Erotophonophilia' was a project designed and created by me for my third year project at university. It was based around the the psychological paraphilia known as Erotophonophilia, which is where a person can only achieve full sexual gratification via the fantasy or act of murder. This project arose from my interest in taboo subject matter, which took me along a progression of serial killers, psychopaths and psychological disorders until I had found my theme. Through my research, I came to the conclusion of wanting to create a murder victim a psychopathic killer with this disorder, so I found a model and began sculpting a torso. As my mound of clay began to take the form of a mutilated torso, I began to piece together the story of my serial killer.

"A middle class man, who from a young age would hurt animals and other children. As a boy he was sexually and mentally abused through his childhood. Growing up, he developed a psychopathy disorder leaving him with no sense of empathy. He began to take his abuse out on others and killing animals, giving him his first taste of death. It is not until he gets into his first relationship as an adult that he begins to experience what it is to be loved and cared for. His partner was an open person who would satisfy his BDSM fantasies, however they became more extreme the more they were acted. This led to knife play being introduced, at which point her body could not take it and he accidentally killed her. The physical act of killing her gave him more pleasure than he had every experienced, whilst tearing his mind apart with grief. He had lost the only person to ever love him and this set him on a path seeking to find another to replace her."

For the piece as a whole, I wanted to create a user experience. I wanted the audience to be able to physically interact with the body and I found that silicone would give the best life-like feel of skin. I sculpted and cast out a selection of organs, such as the heart, lungs, liver, stomach and kidneys, that would exist in the location of a stomach would. As the piece was being cast in silicone, I fixed the organs in place in their anatomical positions. The heart was suspended between the two lungs inside a ribcage and the other organs formed a layer below the wound. These two 'sections' of the body were separated by a diaphram. The body was created as a silicone skin which was then filled with a soft foam; this gave the feel and weight of a real torso. At the exhibition, the audience were encouraged to push their hands through the wound and into the body to feel the organs that lay inside. The piece was designed to give the audience an insight as to what Erotophonophilia was and how someone who suffered from it may feel. The physical act of inserting your hand into the body, surrounded by the psychopaths shrine and murder table, enabled this to happen.