Nourish (Heat Waves / Water Falls 2)
29" x 72 x 5”
Expired petrochemical-derived enteral feeding tubes, 126 years of annual average temperature data for 18 major US river basins, plant fibers, plant and insect derived dyes, mineral mordants
This sculpture comprises annual average temperature data for each of the 18 major river basins in the continental US, materialized as color-coded plant and insect dyed cotton. The datasets are coiled along bundles of expired plastic enteral feeding tubes, twisting through each other, bound at points where the temperature data for multiple places align, and eventually flowing together at the top of the sculpture, sharing the consequences of our present-day heated planet. Nourish is one of a series of works exploring the interconnections of life-sustaining circulatory systems inside and outside of the human body—from lungs and arteries to forests and watersheds. I transform expired medical tubes into sculptures that reference landscapes, interweaving petrochemical- and plant-derived materials with data to trace relationships between rising temperatures, extraction, plastic pollution, and illness. In the context of worsening intertwined health and climate crises, the expired enteral feeding tubes embody both lost opportunities for care and the proliferation of plastics in bodies and ecosystems. Wrapping and bundling the tubes by hand, then, becomes an expression of the need to care for our interconnected lives.