In my reimagined future, a feminist Mother Nature sews, staples, and animates the shells, skins, and debris of mollusks to create a hybrid filtration system. These mutated creatures purposefully inhale silt and pollution, expelling pearls in return. The resulting artwork is simultaneously abject and decadent in both coloration and materiality. Keloid, scabby, caramel-rust splotches of crystallized salt cling to creamy, milky wedding-dress satins, silks, and laces sourced from secondhand stores, all blanketed in craft-store pearls.

 

In the installation (She Will) Live Through This, which was included in the 2026 Angels Gate Cultural Center exhibition Built on Water, this soft, off-white palette evokes the tragic bleaching of coral reefs while serving as a neutral screen for Going Fishing, the aquatic video overlay by Jennifer Gunlock. The secondhand wedding dresses recall discarded oaths and the fragile renewal of promises. The craft-store pearls are aggressively opalescent and overdone; though they nod to an optimistic future, these plastic baubles ultimately have no place in an ecologically conscious world.​

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To read the complete statement, click here.