The series Lapse (I-V) responds to the city and port of Mobile as a site of exchange, colonial histories, and arrivals and departures. The works query the porosity of borders and bodies, and of the infrastructures that hold both. The fluidity of bodies—political, social, ecological, biological—is evoked through the simple forms in Lapse (I-V) which might stand in for pipes, clothed figures, or tenous columns. The use of Concrete Canvas—a sustainable alternative to mixing concrete for applications such as irrigation and erosion control—combined with a process of forming that relies on tying, folding, rolling, and draping before curing and setting, formalizes this intersection of body and infrastructure (or, body-as-infrastructure). The works confront the impossibility of bordering as a stable and fixed (im)position and instead gesture toward the moments when such bodies lapse into and out of one another, when they might become unstable, leak, or spill over.

Commissioned for Borderwaters, curated by Elizabeth S. Hawley
Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Mobile, Alabama, US

Lapse I-V, 2023
Concrete Canvas, ratchet straps, lashing straps, packing tape, rope, cast net, eyelets, nuts, bolts, zip ties, keychain, and squid skirt.
295 x 31 x 31 cm, 225 x 31 x 31 cm, 267 x 20.5 x 20.5 cm, 250 x 24 x 15 cm, 90 x 33 x 38 cm, 32 x 89 x 61 cm

Supported by Research at Central Saint Martins, UAL and the Gwaertler Stiftung.

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