In this photograph, I’m holding a large piece of red fabric with both hands and deep care. My gesture is filled with desire, tenderness, joy, and commitment. The red fabric feels like a generous offering to the world, a force that moves beyond me but emerges from my most profound untamed intuitive knowledges. I designed the dress to explore what Audre Lorde describes as the “ancient and hidden places of possibility within ourselves.” As a river, the red fabric generously pours out, diluting my body’s boundaries toward an interdependent being. My work is about inhabiting my poetic, political, and metaphorical bodies to be with and for others. I created the dress, performed with it, and staged the photograph, but my beloved partner's eyes captured the moment. A term I found to express some of the qualities of this work is “visceral minimalism” to the extent it relates the deep, ancient untamed darkness of my gut through simple and direct materials and compositional elements.
