Long Distance Call, 2021
Two handheld shower heads, shower hose, human hair, coconut shell, coconut tanning oil, thread, plaster dental cast, iridescent paint, reused (Burlap, Popped balloons, bread clips, tea light metal cups, cannabis packing bags, beer bottle caps, pizza box packaging sheet, festival wristbands, cigarette filters, umbrella fabric, polyester fiberfill)
“A true ecologist loves [waste]” - Slavoj Zizek
A century ago, psychoanalysts identified skin as the body’s fixed boundary - a vessel for the ego - but also its origin. Identity was conceptualized as something contained, gradually separating from the ‘mother.’ I prefer Allison Weir’s understanding of identity as relational, where freedom is found through connection. Rather than being static categories, she argues that identity depends on the acceptance of nonidentity, difference and a connection to others. Identity is an on-going dynamic process.
Long Distance Call explores the notion of identity as connection, and consequently, freedom. The installation seeks to position identity as a porous, shared and a communicative process by incorporating what I term “social materials”, gathered from social events after they were deemed useless. Social waste materials, like popped balloons and burnt-out candles, are juxtaposed with material signifiers of my own body, like my hair and a plaster cast of my teeth. The work recontextualizes these materials in a way that shifts focus from each individual component’s origins to the entire sculpture. The piece suggests a playful sensibility that transcends the singularity of its parts. The work is connective; I become others, and others become me. Long Distance Call aims to evoke a gesture open to multiple interpretations, where the viewer may not fully grasp what the maker is trying to say or do, yet remains within the visual language of a game. Identity and love are not so different. Similarly to this work, it is like an explorative game of amalgamating moments shared with others into one tangible experience.
Long Distance Call was exhibited alongside a themed commission residency exhibition, Borderless, Stateless, in Trinity Square Video’s Vitrine.