The Entrails of the Earth Group to Form a House
A group of small collages made in Oaxaca in the Fall of 2022, this series' title, "The Entrails of the Earth Group to Form a House", is quoted from the poem "The Iron and the Rust" by the French Surrealist writer Michel Leiris (1901-1990). The images are comprised of shapes meant to represent the workings of the body and the experience of living in a body. Made in a time in my life that followed several recent health related incidents, and in reference to many years of living in chronic pain due to migraines, these works aim to display the often invisible threads of pain we carry in this house we call a body. The natural materials used, many of which were found in Mexico, include copal seeds, pochote and marigold petals, raw cochineal (found on a nopal cactus on a rooftop), indigo and brazil wood dyed yarn, pressed flowers from Teotihuacan, and various ochres. These living contributions speak in conversation with the meaning behind the work - of life and death, of the containers of our existence, of all that is given, all that is taken, and all that is left behind.