All Directions At Once (2018-2022)

GIF essay, installation

This GIF essay, part of a larger body of work titled “A Topography of Excesses,” engages with practices of herbal birth control and transmissions of indigenous and folk knowledges as acts of radical, decolonizing care. It starts by invoking ayoowiri, a plant that grows abundantly in the tropical areas of the Americas; during European occupation of the continent, an infusion of this plant was often used as a contraceptive (and, in stronger doses, as an abortifacient) by enslaved Indigenous and African peoples as a strategy of resistance. Through the stories of ayoowiri and other contraceptive and abortifacient plants, the essay nurtures the idea of radical decolonizing care and unravels the poetic dimensions of excess as a fragmented, fast-paced pluri-verse, meshing together perceived pasts, presents, and futures; a disjointed collective, moving to all directions at once. 

Created for Schloss Solitude and ZKM as part of their web residency program. More information in the project and its background can be found in this interview, published on their website. Since 2022, this work is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago — the first internet-based work in their collection.

The GIF essay can now be accessed on their website: https://alldirectionsatonce.artic.art/