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Reeve icon Porous

Porous Exhibit Display
Porous | 2023
Animated Painting. 4 min
Watercolor paintings. Different sizes.

Porous is an experimental, multi-media film that unpicks the subtle nuances of sexual assault and the irregularities of memory. The enclosed bathroom setting serves as a vessel in which memories are confronted as the boundaries between water and skin blur. Water immersion provides a pathway to healing and entering the unconscious, as suspended and floating our bodies move out of time with the rest of the world.
The motivation for the piece stems from a personal struggle to define my own experience of sexual assault. The allusion to the event through symbolism and sound reflects a profound lack of personal clarity over these events. The influence of magical realism provides a framework for the narrative, as physical space and time stretch and change without explanation.
The film operates as an animated painting, combining various mediums and techniques such as paint-on-glass animation, stop motion, digital frame-by-frame animation, and hand-painted gouache backgrounds. The idea was to create tactile imagery that flows freely, untethered from a canvas.


The material, its limitations, and its capabilities are usually a starting point when beginning a project. Understanding when one material ends and another begins and the implicit symbolism found in the material help to create layers of meaning in animation. I think my process is quite multi-disciplined as I move fluidly between hand-drawn, digital, paint-on-glass animation and painting. My animation process is intertwined with my painting; I often simultaneously work on both. I think this contrast in workflow helps me stay focused and keeps making things exciting. Like probably all animators, I think of animation as the highest form of art, one where figuration, abstraction, sound, and materiality all meet in a time-based medium that immerses the viewer for long after the film runs.

Figuration, abstraction, sound, and materiality all meet in a time-based medium that immerses the viewer for long after the film runs quote symbol

Cecilia Reeve
Cecilia Reeve
Nationality: British
Independent Animator

Cecilia Reeve (b.1996) is a London-based artist exploring the intersection between painting and animation. She recently completed her MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art (2023), before this, she studied Illustration (BA) at the University of Brighton (2018) and her foundation at Falmouth University (2014).