About

Konecki-Brazeal is a graduate student at Arizona State University focused on ancient body modification practices. Her current research focuses on tattooing in Ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, and her overall research aims to investigate how ancient humans used their bodies as sites or tools of devotion. Her archaeological and art history scholarship informs her artistic practice, which consists of fiber and steel sculptural works. Along with her studio practice, Konecki-Brazeal also produces archaeological illustrations for numerous excavations with which she is affiliated, as well as on a contract basis.

In addition to her academic pursuits, Konecki-Brazeal is an active member of the Antiochia ad Cragum Archaeological Research project in Gazipasa, Turkey. As a field assistant and trench supervisor, she helps with fieldwork and archaeological illustration efforts, contributing to an ever-growing body of research about the region and the ancient Roman city. Additionally, she is a member of the Bandafassi Regional Archaeological Project at ASU. Currently, she works in the Bandafassi lithics lab at Arizona State University, analyzing artifacts, compiling data, and creating academic illustrations for the project.

Artist’s Statement

My work exists at the intersection of art and archaeology, engaging the body as both subject and tool in the construction of material meaning. Rooted in an interdisciplinary practice, I use textiles, metalwork, and organic plant matter to explore how memory, ritual, and belief are embedded in physical forms. These materials, chosen for their historical, ecological, and anthropological resonance, allow me to create works that feel simultaneously ancient and contemporary, tactile and conceptual.

I draw deeply from my background as both a former tattooer and an archaeologist, particularly my research into how bodily devotion has been practiced and preserved across time. My focus on ancient tattooing, alongside other corporeal rituals, guides my understanding of the body as a site of belief, resistance, and transformation. These practices, often omitted from dominant historical narratives, speak to a human impulse to mark the skin not only as ornament but as evidence of devotion. My studio practice mirrors this inquiry through gestures such as stitching, oxidizing, weaving, and burning, acts that echo inscription, alteration, and the layered language of ritual.

Much of my recent work engages textiles as metaphoric skins: fragile yet substantial surfaces that carry the traces of time, labor, and commitment. I incorporate seedpods, bark, and plant fibers not just for their formal properties, but for their symbolic ties to regeneration, decay, and ancestral knowledge. These materials speak to cultural and site-specific stories, and to the ecological interdependencies that shape human culture.

Rather than replicate historical artifacts, I use the studio as a site for reimagining them, for abstracting forms, recontextualizing gestures, and allowing intuitive processes to converse with scholarly research. This methodology reflects my belief that both artists and archaeologists are storytellers: we work with fragments, read materials for meaning, and attempt to reconstruct the absent or invisible through interpretive acts.

While my methods are materially grounded and process-intensive, the true aim of my practice lies beyond the studio. What matters most is not what I make, but what the work makes possible, and how it resonates with myself and with the viewer. The transmission of forgotten forms of human expression is the measure of the work.

As someone whose educational path has been shaped by economic constraints, I view the open-source dissemination of my research as a means to democratize knowledge and empower others to make meaning across disciplinary boundaries. I envision my studio practice not just as a space of creation, but as a platform for collaborative research, embodied learning, and experimental education.

Ultimately, I see objects as vessels of memory, of devotion, and of transformation. My practice is a form of translation: from past to present, from science to spirit, from material to meaning.