We frequently spend time in bathrooms working to make our bodies presentable in one fashion or another, disposing waste, cleaning ourselves, belying the effort we spend exerting control over our bodies. However, this process becomes complicated when the body becomes sick, or in some way un-controllable: spending too much time in the bathroom, or discussing causes of improper waste disposal, are taboo. Those bodily functions - shit, piss, pus, mucus - we work to ignore, or at the very least avoid, because it's gross, regardless of the universality of bodily fluid. Like exposure to toxins crossing biological boundaries, body dysfunction becomes illustrative of the social boundaries that are so carefully constructed around what is considered healthy or hygienic and what is considered abject, that which is repellent or disgusting. Having spent years negotiating with my own body in bathrooms due to various gastrointestinal illnesses, I realized I had become particularly attuned to shame and anxiety over sickness, while fighting to return to "normal," and that furthermore my shame over bodily function was compounded by societal pressure to perform gender in a particular manner. For this reason, I felt focusing on the bathroom space was critical in making the work, and began casting objects from my apartment bathroom, making multiple tubs, sinks, and toilets.
Focusing bathroom infrastructure, my installation plans feature paper sculptures of sinks, a bathtub, pipes, all removed from their original context and remade into a different type of liquid-cycling body. The paper forms are suspended above a shallow basin, where water pools before being pulled upwards through tubing and allowed to seep through the paper structures. Over time, the paper sculptures loose shape and fall apart into the basin below, where continuous water flow would slowly render the paper back to fibrous pulp.
Ongoing chemical changes and transformation create a positive feedback system: the longer time goes on, the stronger the smell and sounds become as the sculptures fall apart. The paper sculptures are literally being transformed back into a wet, fibrous state, considering the watery pulp as the sculpture’s final form within the space. As the installation continues to degrade and water recycles through, the water takes on a murky orange appearance, from the buildup of the iron oxide-rich red clay soil separated from the pulped fibers through the screen. The sculpture itself is mortal: it falls apart, from the weight and chemical changes water brings to the paper fiber, time being the only variable. The installation confronts the viewer, placing them in a position to consider the immediate reactions stemming from experiences in both the bathroom as well as in considering the very features that make us as organisms, lacking the concrete boundaries we typically construct through norms and actions.
Materials and interviews from Columbia College Chicago’s cancelled 2020 MFA Exhibition are currently hosted online through Glass Curtain Gallery here. Take a look at my talented peers hardwork! :)
This project was partially funded by The Albert P. Weisman Award, a private trust of Columbia College Chicago.