Gestrata 2021, 8:05, Video
Gestrata overlays my experience with the physical changes in my body during pregnancy and slow changes that the earth experiences through geological processes. This type of imagining, whether applied to the inner and outer of landscapes or our own bodies, is crucial in imagining the flux of the warming planet. It is about the unknown of the other side and the desire to explore through touch. (i.e. we can only guess at what is inside the earth by measuring the pulses of earthquakes.) In avoidance of gendered and stigma-filled expectations of pregnancy, I directed my questions toward animacy--what it means to be a changing body living on a changing and shifting planet. Through written and poetic captions I propose that infants aren’t purely innocent blank slates, but that they perhaps hold memory of what it is like to be in constant motion. Capitalistic Western ideals want to mask the world as unbreakable and unmoving. Mechanisms are used to measure-mark-take both the body and planet, but I am drawn to the unmeasurable. Changing and shifting forms delude bounds. Through my own body’s relationship to the geological make-up of the earth, I try to grasp the sounds and feelings of our current moment of unraveling stability.
Accompanying Sculptures:
Breached, 2023 hydrocal, pigment and tar, 4 ft x 5 ft x 4 ft
Dilate Torsion, 2023, silicone, resin, sand, and tar, 5 ft x 3 ft x 2ft