Peeling Ancestors: Collecting Time Under the Death Drive, 2022

MFA Thesis Exhibition at Ditch Projects, Springfield, Oregon

My practice is an attempt to preserve the temporary of my every day and collect the uncapturable. Urges to safe-keep derives from my fear of memory loss growing up experiencing the hardships of loved ones suffering from Alzheimer’s and Dementia. In the body of sculptural work Peeling Ancestors, Jell-O is used as a container to investigate how my body is at once archive and anarchive. 

A torn tea packet. A banana peel. Plucked petals and snipped dead leaves from my house plant. In the floor installation Jell-O Squares, miniscule moments of my every day that should regularly get thrown to the trash are instead carefully collected, cherished, and protected between layers of Jell-O. These “preserved” leftovers ultimately do not last, as flimsy membranous sheets shift state day by day--growing ever more delicate, brittle, and more vulnerable to being broken and re-collecting what has been inside.

Looking closely at draped wall pieces, thin peelings of Jell-O also contain visible leftovers from my body, including fingernail clippings, shaven hair, and swept dust. Beyond what is first noticeable, the Jell-O is also a container for the invisible leftovers—the traces of animal collagen to make gelatin. Histories and traces remain untraceable. The Jell-O is then a living surface of others’ deaths, in a state of perpetual decay. 

The shifting states and materiality of these gelatinous shields contends a tension between ephemerality and trying to preserve something anyway. What is forgotten, unseen, or unknown is just as important as what is known.