Body of Water
2026
Performance lecture; 1 hour
University of Arkansas - Fayetteville; Fayetteville, AR
Ceramics Section, KNUST; Kumasi, Ghana
Body of Water is a multi-sensory performance lecture and hands-on workshop that draws parallels between the domestication of living and wild waterways and the hormonal subjugation of cycling fertile bodies.
Rather than confine, concretize, or subdue these perennial and vital systems, Body of Water asks what might be revealed when we alter our approach: working with cycles of flood and drought, capacity and pain. Rooted in my own lived-experience of endometriosis, a debilitating systemic disease that affects hormone production and creates chronic pain across the fertility cycle, the project discusses the role of artificial hormones in the masking of endometriosis symptoms, a strategy that fails to address the underlying condition. This strategy is not dissimilar to the channelization of perennial rivers whose floods trouble colonial hydrology projects, the infrastructure of which doesn’t take into consideration the importance of rivers with variable flow to broader, interconnected ecosystems.
At the heart of this performance and formally connecting the lines of inquiry between earth, water, and body is a hands-on demonstration introducing participants to the technology of the ceramic pot filter. Ceramic pot filters are made by mixing fine organic materials into clay before it is formed into a vessel that burn out during firing to reveal very small holes. The resulting object has the capacity to capture bacteria and other contaminants as water moves through the object’s vitrified membrane. This ancient water processing system was refined in 1990 by Dr. Fernando Mazariegos and later standardized for global application by Puerto Rican-American potter Ron Rivera—allowing for household-scale water management at the use-site, sidestepping often brittle, large-scale water infrastructures to access water when and how it is available. These adaptive and community-based water solutions are an essential component of cultivating water resiliency in the long-term when we are already beyond crisis-level water scarcity at the global scale.
Body of Water considers these vessels in relationship to the body, mimicking the shape and even the permeability of a uterus afflicted by endometriosis. Positing water capture and ceramic filtration as a strategy to manage perennial cycles of drought and flood, Body of Water suggests adopting systems that adapt to imperfect and often unpredictable conditions—equally those that come with climate change as disabilities such as endometriosis. This adaptation is rooted in a value for the living system—the perennial river, the hormonal clarity of a cycling body—even when it floods.