STATEMENT OF WORK

My work consists of spells and scores in response to trauma, systems of power and abuses of power. The work gives materiality to unseen labor and shared devalued knowledge, or other ways of knowing, often disseminated from the “feminine,” domestic spaces of kitchens and baths. On a personal level, this work is a path to integration after a year of fragmentation.

I reappropriate traditional rituals and practices for the sake of empowerment, including magic, Jewish mysticism, tarot, astrology, baking and craft. My materials–Jell-O, hair, kitchen ingredients and found object assemblages–hold the charges of complex histories, brought present through film and performance.

I reference the decorative arts, spellbooks and cookbooks from specific time periods, based on their astrological parallels to the present. The spells are contained, encased in light boxes, molded into Jell-O, bound by hair and even housed in a refrigerator to defuse harmful energy, but also emanate light. My films show a personal culmination of this work, bringing ancient knowledge into the present, while the spells cast the effects into future time.

Researching and incorporating Jewish protection, magical and folk practices has helped me reconnect to my lineage as I unearth practices that match my own such as how Medieval Jewish spells often took the form of food and worked their way through the body like internal medicine. This topic is relevant both personally and politically as it is driven by the idea that healing yourself can help heal the world. I began these practices after experiences of personal trauma and I connect the relationship of the micro to the macro through the Jewish concept of tikkun olam: the idea of healing the world  starts with the individual. The healing of each individual is essential to the collective and extends to personal, generational and ancestral trauma.