vessel (2019)

Lake Superior, October.

vessel is a performance/ritual/meditation piece reflecting on connection with land, community, and my body & selfhood as a queer individual. Coming of age as a trans person often happens multiple times, and is sometimes accompanied with unwanted loss and rejection–even as we are gaining love and acceptance for ourselves.

Water is a bearer of transformation, and memory.

I documented the process of building a small driftwood boat using found materials and driftwood, made in a similar fashion to on ones I built as a child when visiting the North Shore with my bio family. Afterwards I set the boat in the water along the shore and it washed away, bearing with it poetry, hopes, and deep longing. A release. A returning to; a turning over and over again with the waves as a steady heartbeat.