Lavender Index

BOOTS MAKE ME
A NIGHT BLUE RUSH
ALWAYS AT LEAST TWO INCHES FROM THE GROUND
RUNNING LATE LOOK AT US NOW, JUDITH
WE SIT BACKSTAGE IN MY POEMS

DID YOU KNOW SPIDERS CAN FEEL WITH THEIR WEBS?

LISTENING ALONG THEIR LEG HAIR
LIKE SILK
LOWER BACK LANDING
WE'RE IN GOOD HANDS

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Lavender Index is a mixed-media self-portrait series by Sula Castle

Originally exhibited at Wandsworth Fringe Festival 2025

Using tracing paper, photography, poetry and corporal sculpture, Lavender Index explores the semiotics of femme identity and our transitory fields of perception.
The self-portraits, captured on Sula’s phone, draw a contradiction between intimacy and detachment. Suspended from fine silver chains, the three translucent prints hang side-by-side, encouraging the viewer to lean in, move around and get closer to reveal the downscaled and overlaid images; Abstracted bodily sculptures, distorted, folded and stretched. Poetic annotations are layered onto the images, acting as a second skin and offering glimpses into Sula’s personal index of sapphic lexicon.
The shifting viewpoints, abstract text, interplay of the light and the audience’s own subjectivities mean that the work is viewed differently by every person who engages with it. The deliberate evasion of legibility draws on the experience of being misread in public, particularly in femme or ambiguous bodies.