Polyphobia
Polyphobia is a series of small sculptures by Gawie Joubert, each representing a specific phobia arachnophobia, ophidiophobia, and others built entirely from the artist's own fingernails, collected since 2005. The work pairs a recognisable trigger object with a material that produces a second, separate revulsion, staging fear as a layered rather than singular experience.
The conceptual structure is a redirection. The viewer first identifies the form a spider, a snake, the familiar shape of a phobic image and reacts to it. On closer inspection, the material registers, and the response shifts from fear of the depicted thing to disgust at what the depicted thing is made of. The work is interested in that transition: the moment one aversion supplants another, and the way fear and disgust occupy adjacent but distinct registers.
The sculptures are constructed entirely from accumulated human fingernail clippings, drawn from a single body over nearly two decades. The choice of material is not symbolic dressing; the twenty-year collection is the work's substrate, and its biographical specificity is what gives the disgust its particular weight. The objects are deliberately small, drawing the viewer in close before the material is identified.
