Encased Clouds, 2023
Dried Thyme, Za’atar, sage, ground Turkish coffee, dried rose petals, dehydrated oranges, whole spices, dried chickpeas, white rice, lentils, rose water, Polyester Fiberfill, stockings.
"The cloud is not lost; it is transformed into rain, and the rain is transformed into grass and the grass into cows and then to milk and then into the ice cream you eat. Today if you eat an ice cream, give yourself time to look at the ice cream and say: Hello, cloud! I recognize you.” - Thich Nhat Hahn.
Clouds are objects constantly undertaking transformation. Whether in its natural form, or as the digital "cloud," they are inextricably tied to the dynamic changes within global informational systems. On our planet, clouds exists as a network of dense formations of water molecules, that arguably communicate ecologically via their role in solar energy regulation. In the digital sphere, the cloud - a network of remote serves brimming with computed data - function like a unified ecosystem to allow for communication and memory formation. Today, many societies, rely on cloud storage as the primary technology for collecting and archiving collective memories.
Encased Clouds is an installation that emerged as a means to conjure memories that go beyond what we consider to be our "self." American theologist and writer, Katie Cannon, talks about the act of “remembering what we never knew,” a way for our bodies to return to ourselves; to “re-remember.” Artist and researcher, Onyeka Igwe, calls this “Blood Memory,” an embodied way of knowing that goes further than our mere individualized cognition, and as a bodily feature of ancestry. Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and global spiritual leader, has advocated for the "emptiness" of the separate self, to understand our interbeing as manifestations of our ancestors.
As a way of working through these ideas, Encased Clouds incorporates aromatic elements taken from my grandmother’s faint recollection of Palestine. Though a personal project, this work also encourages a collective re-remembering. Stockings are metamorphosed into cocoon-like sculptures using assorted dried foods and polyester fiberfill, a cloud-like material. This transformative and generative gesture of encasing attempts to question how ancestral memories are formed and inherited from the land, and perhaps through the passing down of food eating patterns.
Encased Clouds was commissioned by Kunn Collective for the Damma Launch Party at OBJX Studios.