In the Window Gallery, earth-toned films hang in wooden structures adorned with ceramic elements. These films are created by SCOBYS, (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), a starter culture responsible for and a byproduct of the kombucha fermentation process. These cellulose based bio films are generated when the colonies of bacteria and yeast feed on the sugars of sweetened black tea, their amber colour coming from the tannins in the tea leaves. These porous films have been dried, dyed, impressed, cut, and sewn to resemble textiles, often referencing gates, screens, curtains, meshes, things found in a domestic context that can both shroud and reveal different bodies, both human and non-human. These films hang from carved wooden structures that reflect various contours and surfaces, recalling organic human and mycelial forms, such as umbilical cords, fruiting mushroom bodies, and the natural edges of the dried SCOBY. Ceramics precariously adorn these SCOBY/wood sculptures, their shapes inspired by vessels that could hold and mold the fermenting liquids in its various states.

Artist Statement

At the intersections of disgust and beauty, decay and decadence, my practice encompasses fermentation methodologies, feminist and diasporic ecologies, materiality of cultures, and the relationships between the body and non-human creation. I have been investigating material, matter, and matrices; sites of production of new lineages and the sources of repetition and mutation. This body of work is focused on kombucha, a fermented beverage made from sweetened tea that originated in Northern China, more recently becoming popular in the West as a wellness product. The SCOBY is the starter culture responsible for initiating the fermentation process, and results in a cellulose-based bio film with each new batch of kombucha. The fact that invisible microbes, not humans, are responsible for creating kombucha's known funk subverts established understandings of animacy. If one takes proper care of one's starter (often called the "mother") and enables cycles of new nourishment and preservation, it is possible to make kombucha and similar foods endlessly, generation after generation. The exact origin of the first kombucha batch - and, with it, the first mother - is muddied through the diaspora of its first caretakers. Access to the origin is both impossible and inherent in this procedure of fermentation - attempts to trace a clear lineage can fail. Yet the microbial colonies we interact with in the present are clearly descended from that lost ancestor. This impossible site of origin allows us to reflect on the nuances of "motherlands" and where generations of human and nonhuman life can thrive, and so queers the possibilities of a mothering body. I have been exploring the uses of this SCOBY film in my work, both as a site of physical and metaphorical fermentation and as a surface that is generated from a process of nourishment, care, and preservation. These SCOBY works are installed like screens that affect the movement of the body, elucidating Sara Ahmed's description of how a slantwise or queer orientation must be overcome "because they block bodily action; they inhibit the body that it ceases to extend into phenomenal space." The mark-making I use references gates, screens, and meshes - aspects of domestic thresholds that are repeated throughout Hong Kong, my ancestral home, as well as imagery that calls on duplication, following the organic symmetry/doubling of the body line.