THE BABY BUCHA PROJECT

In this exposition, I confront my feelings about having been transnationally adopted. I do not consider adoption a ‘win-win situation’, and I encourage people to think critically about the practice as well as the glorification of it. The colorblindness with which I was encountered as a PoC growing up with white parents was an existential complication for me. I was plagued by feelings I could not understand at the time and grew isolated. I want to visually express the feeling of being estranged and alienated from one’s own body and the fear of drowning in one’s own skin. I have often felt compelled to unzip my skin suit and leave it next to my trousers in a heap on the floor. In this project, I grow my own skin in a vat – or more specifically, I grow a kombucha culture in tea and sugar. During the fermentation process, the kombucha culture creates a cellulose material that resembles human flesh. The process is a slow one, and developing the material demands a great deal of love and nutrition. In return, I get a self-produced material that enables me to work independently.