My work centers care as a contradictory force. The words care and concern both stem from the Latin cura—a root that also gives cure–which exposes an intricate relationship between affect, responsibility and repair. My sculptures are never finished; they are part of an ongoing choreography, where the act of tending to the survival of a living kombucha culture depends on enduring caretaking.
Inspired by botanical Grafting—a form of procreation that combines two organisms. The wounding of growths requires an arrangement of touching in order to heal jointly. In my work human body parts are assembled together, a union that often is met with disgust. It speaks to abjection where the monster becomes monstrous not through its creation, but through its abandonment.
The work lives, but not because I will it to; it lives because I return to it, again and again, it resists abandonment. It affirms the value of what is \ continuously becoming, through cycles of nurturing. During a trip to China in 2015, I was gifted this kombucha-mother. Since then it has become a matrilineal thread in my art. The Kombucha occupies a unique space—akin to a third category—between living and non-living things. It is a living organism that reproduces asexually and exhibits a form of self-creation that exists beyond the human experience.
My sculptures evolve over the course of the exhibition, their living structures are held together by sutures and tubes connected to a water and CO₂ tank. A programmed data system regulates the release of water, sustaining the work’s aliveness through an infrastructure of artificial care.