Domestic Decay

2023
Copper, rotting fruit, dried sunflowers, found objects
72” x 34” x 46”

Impermanence and decay are inherent truths of existence. We do our best to preserve, holding tight to the present through methods that change the structure we wish to keep—salting and pickling our foods, injecting and embalming our bodies, and protecting our precious possessions under covers to shield them from fingertips and faults. Still, nothing can exist forever in its current state. Food spoils, skin sheds, and materials wither without maintenance.

Human relationships are no exception. Love emerges and blossoms into energies that never existed before we made them, folding into unimaginable shapes that twist and turn in and out of impossible matrices. Love is commodified through objects in our homes, and the desire to protect is fundamentally corrosive. To categorize anything into preciousness in a way that defies essential use is to see it beyond expiration. To behold is to possess; every edge is an entryway for rot, just as a squeeze becomes a bruise.

There is love behind preservation, but at what cost? Is anything worth its value so much that it circumvents its journey through decay? Entanglements can be corrupt at their core, with spoilage that occurs unseen until the smell is unavoidable and new growth begins to form. However, these transgressions in our vitrines create the radical freedom to fold into natural erosion. I seek to explore this realm of humanity through entities created in domesticity and existing in deterioration. This body of work explores the nature of being where containment is the lie and leaks are the truth. Precious metal protects precious spaces, while salt and vinegar consume. There is something beautiful at the end of this journey; as the shell crumbles, framework for new growth is revealed and decay begets anew.

i keep
you
in a jar
to see you
every day

said my voice to the mold
as if it was warmth in my bed

and the idea of letting go
rips chords from my belly;
i moved ground and dust
to keep you here
 
but the response is silence

you decayed
in the glass.

new growth
erupts like lemon
tastes to tongue:
a fuzzy way that pulp
becomes solid

and what lay beyond
is a sight to behold—
movement of life
on foundation i built

E.R.