Lumen and Chaperone

“Lumen” choreographs viewers’ movements to sit on a latch hooked rug made with the hand-spun wool of laboratory llamas and alpacas. The wool for the sculpture was donated by biological laboratories that use camelids to produce antibodies for human drugs including vaccines and antiviral treatments. After washing and carding the fiber by hand, the wool was spun into yarn to be used in “Lumen” and other tactile sculptures. In biology, the lumen is the interior part of a cellular structure where a protein is folded and modified. Text accompanying the rug instructs the viewer to perform this folding action. Sitting on the rug engages viewers with unseen materialities and labor, of both humans and non-humans, as they touch the yarn and listen to an accompanying soundscape layering recordings made in a biotech lab. Robotic movements of machines, gurgling dish drains, and human interactions come together to create a sonic tour entitled “Chaperone”. Bass shakers beneath the rug platform vibrate with the bumps, clicks and bangs of laboratory machines in the soundscape. The work questions notions of the presence and absence of bodies evoking the mutability of categories that delineate their status.