Body of substance, 2020
Diving into murky, unfathomable depths, Body of substance is a collection of work that explores microbial extension of the body and queer kinship. Here science, religious ritual, and identity collide in bread sculptures, performance, and sourdough starter. Exploring altar bread recipes of my Catholic faith, I noticed the recipes’ use of language that blurred the line between body and food and heralded purity and cleanliness. Responding to the term transubstantiation, where a wafer of unleavened bread is transformed into the flesh of Jesus, I considered how my traditional unclean, queer body, could be manifested in bread, to be substantial. After stacking loaves emblazoned with the term to my height, the pillar of bread collapsed. Soon the bread began to break apart and mold. Here microbes from my skin, the bread, the air began to take host on this body of bread, forming a microbial transubstantiation of my body. The clean becomes unclean and unleavened, unyeasted, unliving bread becomes a site of new life.
