Ouroboros

ouroboros
studio kura
itoshima, japan 2019

yoni kami
performative stop-motion animation, handmade book

Yoni Kami explores the idea of spirits as they relate to the female body. Drawing from both Hindu and Shinto texts, the pieces reference yoni, an all-encompassing Hindu word for the female reproductive system, and kami, the Shinto spirits believed to inhabit all things. Displayed together, the handmade book and looped video support and reference one another, dancing between palpable, written concept and performative, alternate reality. Together they ask, what if our bodies had spirits that inhabited them? Would these spirits have memories of their own?

retrace
performative moving painting

Retrace combines performance, paint and stop motion animation to demonstrate the experience of body memory. Centered around the idea of repetition, the piece exists in two ways: as a performance in which the painter traces the animated hand, and as a painting in which the animated hand traces the residual performance. In a looped, repetitive conversation with itself, Retrace physically and figuratively illustrates the ways in which we replay and relive physical experiences.

divine lightness / divine darkness
tracing paper, paint

Using the cycles of the moon as a visual framework, this 16 piece installation explores the ways in which lightness and darkness inform varying definitions of enlightenment. While the full moon represents belief systems based on the idea that divinity is light, the new moon represents belief systems based on the idea that divinity is nothingness, or darkness. Drawing from religious texts, auto-biographical and fictional prose, interviews and quotes, Divine Lightness / Divine Darkness leads the viewer through a sort of thesis, arguing a case for magic as choice.

wishbone
34 card oracle deck

Inspired by the polarity between light and dark, this oracle deck explores the dichotomy between magical construct and enlightened nothingness. Each card draws visual and conceptual material from both natural phenomena and occult practice, blurring the line between science and mysticism. By shedding light on the precariousness of reality and our own constructed experience of it, Wishbone encourages us to embrace the triviality of life as we know it. In this way, it uses the overwhelming idea of nothingness as a tool with which we can draw light out of dark, construct positivity out of negativity, and manifest acceptance, oneness, and magic as choice.