Mörk Materia (Dark Matter)

2021 - ongoing

This ongoing body of work is in response to Swedish poet and critic Aase Berg’s epic poem, Mörk Materia (Dark Matter). Berg’s ecriture-feminine-like prose evokes a post-human world of horrific strangeness and malignant renewal. In the book-length poem, planet Earth’s upheaval is projected to passengers aboard a spaceship. They witness images of plant-human hybrids, the upheaval of all matter, and a new order of biology: post-radiation, post-climate disaster. My ceramics feature ashen, chrome, and mold-like glazes, adhered shells, rocks, and non-biodegradable materials as if altered by catastrophe or unearthed from a future where biology has reorganized or broken down.

Holographic photographs and prints on plexiglass are sculptural optical illusions and act as a portal, shape-shifting as the viewer walks past and obscures the layered image with their eyes. The photographs and prints are a response to the lost work of the late artist Tom Benson who was commissioned by Berg to create collages, accompanying the first publication of the poem, and a series of “portals”–which included images and bits of scientific texts–so the reader could enter the book online. These portals are now lost to time and the early Internet since the poem’s first publication in 1999.