Dismantle. Reimagine. Rebuild.
A single mother raising a family in Egypt, my grandmother took apart the clothes she made for her children to rearrange the materials into new garments. Born out of necessity and nourished with careful handwork, she dismantled, reimagined, and crafted possibility, making much with little. What if we took the same approach to the structures that guide our relationships to human and more-than-human kin?
Speculative Structures uses processes of undoing, reimagining, and reforming to reimagine the systems of connection that link humans and more-than-humans across space and time. To create these assemblages, I dismantle structures entangled within networks of exploitative capitalism, including shipping palettes and discarded clothing. This allows for material reconfigurations driven by principles of mutuality, care, and collectivity. Objects made of reclaimed clay reference rituals dedicated to transformation practiced by my Egyptian ancestors. These materials – fiber, clay, and wood – have travelled alongside humans since our beginnings providing our first shelters. Clay has nourished life since before human existence. Woven fiber provides the first protection we receive when we enter this world and is the last protection we receive before we leave. In contrast to the extractive systems in which they have travelled, realigning these materials one relationship at a time conjures a gentler way of being with the living and non-living bodies around us.
Speculative Structures emerges from the intersection of my personal history and a committed belief in the possibility of systemic transformation. This work is rooted in critiques of systems within western society that propose and uphold firm boundaries between valuable and disposable, self and other, human and non-human beings. Speculative Structures operates in opposition to capitalism’s insistence on hyper-productivity, easily consumed products, and hierarchies of value. I adopt processes that insist on slow transformation and relationship-building as modes of resistance. I embrace improvisation and material experimentation as a means of courting possibility while challenging notions of right and wrong ways of being. Compelled by a belief that the objects we make help to shape the realities we inhabit, each gesture within these works is infused with a quiet prayer, a desperate plea, and a fervent commitment to forming healthier systems of relation.