Imagining Dust, 2018 – 2019, coded animation, duration variable
Imagining Dust, 2021, digital drawing, stills from coded animation
In this pandemic, the language referring to illness and bodies must continue to be queered. Historically, identifiers and rhetoric about disability are used to designate “quality of life” without allowing self determination. As a queer disabled person, I have ancestors that I have never met, who were prescribed narratives surrounding their bodies.
Golem are described as being voiceless and the name itself means “imperfect” and “unformed” in Hebrew. I subvert and reclaim golem lore by coding a golem who is perpetually recreated through Hebrew words. In Jewish folklore golem are humanoid creatures created with clay and words to protect Jewish communities that are in grave danger. It is compelling that golem are created with words, an intangible material that they are said to lack. In these stories, golem are often dehumanized and treated as objects who, once they gain agency, are perceived as dangerous and subsequently killed.
Many of the messages within these stories reflect ways that systems of power function in relation to disability today. This work is deeply entwined in a questioning of dehumanization, alter-humanization, allowed agency, cultural anxieties around monstrosity and how humanness is delineated and awarded to certain bodies.
collecting ash
kneading, revolving metamorphosis
burial
circular dance
recognize, reimagine
shiva
truth (one letter away from death)
feedback