What to the Mind Is the Ceiling Is to the Body the Floor

Part I: GLANCE

2026

Sited at the Institute For Contemporary Art at VCU

Drawing from classical angelology, this installation reimagines the celestial hierarchy as a metaphor for erotic hierarchies structured through the gaze. In religious cosmology, angels closest to the divine are imagined less as bodies than as mechanisms of perception, while lower orders gradually take on human form. Through this descent, vision condenses into flesh.

The work centers on the figure of the Watcher: the angel whose act of observing becomes fascination, longing, and eventual fall. Suspended above the viewer, larger sculptural forms operate as distant structures of surveillance and desire, while the more intimate sculptural elements below embody the Watchers themselves in the form of shoes: small architectures for the foot that carry the trace of the body without fully containing it. Here, the gaze becomes spatialized, organizing bodies through proximity, visibility, and the tension between watching and touch.

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Jubilant Emigration

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Part II: LINGER