Biowarfare, 2023

Agar, Plexiglass, Wood, Faux Jade, Polished Shell, Test Tubes, Cotton swab

Biowarfare is a game board that invites attendees to participate by contributing their saliva, and then plating it on a single square on the board. Biowarfare is a participant activated performance that re-situates participants in the time of covid, where individual control was lost, physicality was infantilized, and biology was scrutinized. The piece invites 32 strangers to participate by contributing a part of themselves to the artwork - their saliva containing their oral microbiome.  

Individuals were asked to select an isolated square space to place themselves, and inoculate their saliva onto the single square on the board with their saliva. Once 32 strangers filled the board, the artist played a game of checkers with her estranged father, speaking face-to-face for the first time in over 3 years. The distance and intimacy between family and stranger, stranger and adversary, friend and community, are put into question and study.